All The Colors of Yesterday
by Elliot Bowers
Summary: In a world without Zalem... Wasteland bandits take over a farm. Twin cyborg-girls escape to earn a living in the city. Yet the city is not a calm and easy place to live in: a city threatened by fragments of a once-dead past.
1. Chapter One

__

All The Colors of Yesterday 

by Elliot Bowers

…

Excerpt Song Lyrics: _The Adversary_

by Crime & The City Solution

…

Chapter 1

…

_____The sun was an intense ball of nuclear heat that steadily burned the vast flatness of this desert wasteland. There seemed to be a lot of nothing out here, nothing but hard-scrabble flatness--lightly sanded and the rolling hills in the far-off distance. Above, the sky was infinitely deep and blue. Looking out on this wide view gave an idea of what eternity looked like. 

_____Nothing out here? If one wandered long enough, a person could find traces of things out here. Every so often, one would find cracked stretches of highway, or a clustered group of brick walls that had once been buildings. The roads, the towns… They were long dead and even longer forgotten. Warfare, earthquakes, toxic pollution, all of that and more had obliterated the land centuries past. The land never quite healed.

_____But civilization had crept up from the wastes and went on. Civilization was machines and factories, concrete landscapes of buildings and asphalt cluttered with steel. And civilization was in the air: A person could always catch a random whiff of chemical smell of factories and machines at work. There were cities far away--machine cities--separated by these dry oceans of earth.

…

_____Out here on the edge of the factory-farm, the city was just so far away. Harrah and Kyrie sat with their backs resting on a massive chunk of engine-block--this side of the machine shadowed against the hot brightness overhead. They had a large canteen of a drink they'd concocted themselves: It was distilled water mixed with an extremely complex chemical that cooled a person's brain. It could also make a person a little tipsy, but that was okay. They called it cooling water, not bothering with a fancier name than that.

_____Sitting side by side, the girls were mirror reflections of each other, physical doubles. Both girls were of average height and vaguely athletic physiques, with long glossy dark hair--long enough to go down the length of their backs and reach the firm curves of their hips. Their faces were pretty in a dollish way, though a bit unsettling if you stared for too long. Broad, high cheeks and full lips beneath large dark eyes and cute noses. 

_____Maybe it was how their faces were perhaps a bit too pale and smooth-skinned despite the burning sun always overhead. Or maybe it was how their large dark eyes seemed a bit too large and too dark--seeming to swallow light. There was also the fact that they were cyborgs.

_____From the neck down, their womanly bodies were made of well-fitted metal parts. The slim lengths of their arms and the lean womanly curves of their torsos were made of sectioned armor--the lengths of their legs just as well-crafted. Their bodies were designed to be as pleasing to the eye as being functional. It was only their hands that seemed decidedly non-feminine: somewhat large, extremely articulate metal hands and fingers good for using tools. 

_____The twins had only been cyborgs for six years and still not quite used to it. To them, they still always felt as if they were wearing light and form-fitting armor. Looked that way, too. But the solid reality was that there was no flesh beneath the armor. 

_____These electromechanical bodies didn't feel numb, though. Piezoelectric and temperature sensors embedded in the surface metal made for some sensation of touch and temperature--helped trick the brain into thinking one still had "flesh" beneath the metal surface--though there was nothing but metal and tubing and wiring inside. There was, though, the artificial flesh of the face: myogel musculature embedded with a higher density of piezoelectric and thermal sensors, covered over with flexible synthetic skin. Their faces were the most sensitive parts and felt the most "real."

_____Maybe if the twins tweaked the resistance settings of their electrical nervous systems some more, or if they wore different footwear. That _could_ increase the sensitivity of their bodies and make them feel less physically numb. It was worth a try. Hmm… 

_____Maybe later. Kyrie readjusted herself a little to find the right spot on the big chunk of machinery she and her sister were leaning against. Comfortable again, she reached down to get a sip of some of the cooling water in their big canteen. 

_____Her words interrupted the peace. "Hey, Harrah? Do you remember why I ever built that big stupid war machine? The thing's been sitting in the hangar, like, _forever._" She turned her head to the right, looking at her twin. "Maybe I was going to use it for something?"

_____"Are you kidding me? Sis, if you don't remember, then I don't remember," responded Harrah. She parted her lips to accept the open mouth of the canteen being offered by Kyrie--took a few swallows. "Thanks. Well, you know how it is. I'm sorry…"

_____"Yeah… Just wondering," went Kyrie, closing up the big canteen and setting it down on this hard hot ground, her metal fingers stroking the sides of the container as she spoke. "There are still teeny tiny little things we don't remember together. I was hoping that was one of 'em."

_____Harrah paused a moment. "Guess we'll have to think about that one some more… Along with what we'll do when the farmers find out about what happened up in Zalem, It's gonna be a real mess if Mr. Lionel doesn't handle it right…. Aw, _geez!" _She was suddenly irritated. "Why didn't we ever make serious plans with him about that! About what happens when the truth hits this farm! The workers are gonna _revolt! _Food and stuff will get burned up and broken if they're pissed off enough! But if they don't burn and break up everything in the first few days, maybe they'll realize that keeping up food production and maintaining the irrigation works will keep everybody from starving to death." 

_____"Or dying of thirst," finished Kyrie. "What about the city? I don't even want to think about how the city is getting by--if other farms already found out about Zalem. If there was trouble, then we'd see the fires and smoke from way out here. But it's kind of funny, you know? We haven't been hearing much from the city… Like they're already calmed down." 

_____"I hope so. For everybody's sake," said Harrah, suddenly thinking about their weapons workshop--abandoned and hidden. In her previous life as a full-flesh human, when not tinkering with the intricacies of advanced agricultural machinery, her semi-secret hobby was to remake and modify guns and weapons. Technically, guns were illegal… But out here on this farm, far out in the desert, who cared? The only permanent representation of city law out here was a Netman--little more than a robot with a mutilated chunk of mutilated brain-matter at the core of its operating system. And with what happened to Zalem, the Netman had been silent for a long time. 

_____Still, since becoming reborn into bodies of machinery, Harrah and Kyrie had locked away their small weapons workshop. The insanely destructive guns, the massive electronic-minded war machine, and other things were sealed up--hopefully forever. If the farmers were to revolt and find those machines of destruction, there would be such death and destruction--and more guilt than Harrah and Kyrie could bear. In fact, the guilt over creating such sinister devices was why they surrendered their humanity--among other things.

…

_____A half-hour later, with Kyrie carrying their canteen on a purse-like sling, the twins walked by the farm works on their way to Mr. Lionel's building. The farm fields were a deceptively green and golden garden of bounty out here. Three-fourths of this farm itself was set aside for irrigated crops of rice, maize and other foods--sated with water pumped up from deep underground and fed with fertilizer processed from desert grit. These mutant strains of food-plants grew to such height in the heat that one couldn't see over them--making for forests of stalks. The remaining one-fourth of the farm area was set aside for people needs, machinery and habitation: living quarters, water well pumps, power generation, machine repair, and living quarters….

_____"Hi girls!" said a coveralls-wearing farmer working the edge of a corn plot, his wiry self well-protected by the sun by his clothes and his wide-brimmed circular hat. He leaned on his hoe. "Just wait for this latest sweet corn to get up! Gonna be great!" He gave them a quick final smile before he went to hoeing. 

_____"We hear you on that… Can't wait!" said one of the twins. "Well, we're off to talk to the supervisor now… See ya later!" They walked on, thinking about farmers and workers like Samuel. That enthusiastic friendliness could quickly turn to bitterness and hatred if there was an uprising. There was a group of security cyborgs around, maintained by technicians like Harrah and Kyrie. Yet that was just a token force. If all the farmers decided to go crazy, the small group of security cyborgs wouldn't be enough at all to restore order. 

_____Thinking these not-so-happy thoughts, the twins soon came to the modern-looking three-story building that belonged to Mr. Lionel: the farm supervisor and owner. The long dark windows up on the second and third stories looked out on everything--the fields of food-crops and the desert even farther out. Those windows were made of glazed glass infused with photo-reactive chemical tinting: darkening when exposed to the full brightness of the day and somewhat more clear at night. Inside, it was cooler.

…

_____In the ground-floor lobby, a bulky male cyborg sat behind a desk, installed by a heavy door. There was a blue-colored sash across his chest--denoting him as high-ranking security. He had a long sheet of newsprint in his metal fingers. The newsprint was about cyborg gladiatorial battles in the city. As for the doorway right of the desk, it was to the stairwell up. 

_____He looked up from his reading, saw the twins, then stood up. "Good afternoon, young ladies. You'll find Mr. Lionel in his office.." He lowered his voice. "He's a little worried, though. Just something you might want to keep in mind."

_____"Yeah, things have been worrying me a little, too," responded the twin on the left. "Guess I'll just go on up for a word or two," added the twin on the right. The security guard nodded and pressed a button set in the desk. There were heavy clicks as the electric locks clicked open. 

_____They climbed the stairs at a moderate pace. As their footwear pattered on the steps, they had time to think about what they were going to say. Would they make suggestions about what to do when the farmers found out about the big change beyond the farm? About the death of the floating city? Maybe they would just play things by ear, depending on Mr. Lionel's mood. Soon enough, they were up on the second floor--on the level of Mr. Lionel's main office.

_____Mr. Lionel's office was on the second floor, beyond a double set of guarded doors that looked wooden--doors actually made of a synthetic substance stronger than wood, with lead and steel beneath. These doors were also opened by the guards. 

_____The office itself was large and carpeted, comfortably lit with incandescent lighting. Dark red carpeting was comforting to the feet. Statues and busts of important--but almost forgotten--people were arranged near the walls to the left and right. Over there at the far end was one lonely desk, set in front of a wide and dark-tinted window that gave a muted view of the crop-fields--the desert far beyond this irrigated oasis. The Deckman, propped at the far right wall, was standing still. It was silent and not moving. 

_____Mr. Lionel, the inhabitant of this office matched the décor. He was a thin, refined sort of gentleman dressed in a gray business suit and white buttoned shirt--looking out at that view. Dressed that way, the man look a lot a businessman of centuries ago, carefully dressed and groomed. His curly blonde hair was carefully cut and squared off. His left hand was in a pocket, and the fingers of his right hand twiddled with an old-style ink-pen. 

_____The twins quickly made their way across the carpeting, their footsteps padded by the carpeting. Standing before the desk, they simultaneously greeted the supervisor, their voices almost perfectly blending in a duet… "_Good afternoon, Mr. Lionel._" They tried to avoid doing that, speaking at the same time and saying the same words, but it happened sometimes. 

_____Without turning, Mr. Lionel returned the greeting. "Good afternoon, Harrah… Kyrie… Well, how are things? No problems with the utility works, I hope." He paused, twiddling the pen in his right hand. "You must know that it's not the machines I'm worried about, though. The truth can't be hidden away forever. Word from the outside is bound to leak in somehow, eventually. And the workers won't be pleased. When things begin to happen, I want you to take care of my son."

_____"Oh, no… I don't think anything's going to happen, Mr. Lionel," said Kyrie, looking sideways at her sister. It was a look that said, _Go with me on this, sis._ "Things have been fine so far. Besides, I haven't heard any trouble. And if there's no trouble on the ground, then there's no trouble to worry about." 

_____"No troubles at all," agreed Harrah. "I don't know people as well as I know machinery, but take it from me. Everything's cool. Besides, you've got people to protect you. Nobody's out to cause trouble. And remember, the city's still working… They're getting by without Zalem's control."

_____Mr. Lionel gave a shrug. He returned his gaze to the outside beyond this tinted office window. In this conversational pause, his eyes happened to look down on someone at ground level out there. It was a man dressed in rag-tag clothing and metal shoulder-pads--the makeshift armor held together with thick dark plastic straps. The armor was dented in places, and his arms were tied behind his back. He was being rough-handled by some of the security cyborgs, probably to be taken to the food processing facility to be put to slave-work: a humane form of punishment for desert bandits. _Another cursed bandit, _he thought to himself. "The city will always exist, but the savages--the bandits--will always be at the gates," he said. "Let them in, and they will destroy what civilization has built. What we all try to keep running."

…

2.

…

_____Stepping out of Mr. Lionel's building, the twins felt a little more downcast. Right now, they were going towards the irrigation station to make sure that the pumps were still in good working order. They had to keep the water flowing in this place. That, and if there were problems the ordinary technicians couldn't handle, they would be around to help out. 

_____Hmm, how true were Mr. Lionel's words? He was always especially worried about bandits and instability--maybe worried too much. He wanted to keep things as they always were, even if Zalem wasn't what it was anymore...and probably never would be again. 

_____They stepped off the sidewalk around Mr. Lionel's building and onto the hard-packed sandy dirt that covered the rest of the compound, keeping to the side to avoid the heavy trucks that carried farm supplies and equipment to and from places. This was their home for as long as they could remember, where they came into renewed existence as cyborgs. If they had to leave… Did Mr. Lionel know more about the situation than they did? 

_____After another heavy truck rumbled by, they heard the distinct sharp sound of a _slap. _It was coming from the side of the security barracks, the building they had to pass by for getting to the irrigation station. _Slap…!_ There it was again, another sharp sound of open metal hand on flesh. The sound was followed by a growled question. Looking once at each other, the twins made a sudden run for where the sounds of pain were coming from.

_____Running together, the two skidded around the corner to see the scene. One of the security personnel, a skinny cyborg with a bony face and reddish-orange sash, had his left metal hand raised--getting ready to _slap_ the captured bandit again, and there was nothing the bandit could do. The bandit was tied down to a rusty metal chair…with barbed wire--the chair set close to a hot wall that reflected even hotter sunlight. 

_____"_Stop it," _shouted the twins together. Just then, Harrah ran and jumped up to grab the security cyborg's raised arm while Kyrie jumped in front of the bandit to shield him from harm with her own body. The other cyborgs clenched their fists while their boss tried to shake off the grip on his wrist. A final jerk of his arm, and he dashed Harrah into the hard dirt.

_____Kyrie went to the aid of her sister, helped her to her feet. "_You stupid jerk…!" _screamed Harrah, her face angry._ "_You _know_ what Mr. Lionel thinks about torturing prisoners! If you plan on eventually putting the prisoner to work in the processing plant, then do it. If you're going to _kill_ him, then do _that_ if you want_. _But don't make him suffer! It's _wrong!_" 

_____"Hah!" laughed the skinny security cyborg. "Mr. Lionel has the sensibility to leave security matters to the _security. _We're the ones who keep losers and freaks like _this one_ from stealing our equipment! Mr. Lionel said he doesn't like torture, but he didn't exactly say anything _against_ it…now did he? And what he doesn't know can't hurt him. If you two little brats weren't so good at fixing stuff, I'd…"

_____"What! You'd do _what_?" Kyrie clenched her fists while her twin did the same. "You'd do _what _to us?" she asked, anger on her young face, dark eyes glinting. A breeze blew their long dark hair. "Any day you're ready, Jimmy. I'll kick your butt and _think_ about repairing it. Think you can take me on, stupid?"

___"And after we hurt you, we'll convince the security chief that he needs a more reliable guy to follow the rules!" added Harrah. "You've already got a few strikes against you. All of those times you got drunk at the bar and started fights, all those times you harassed the girls, those aren't exactly your best moments. So if we trash you, we'll just be doing everybody a favor! If you keep causing trouble _and _torturing prisoners, _you'll _be the one punished!" 

_____"Hey, she's got a point," commented another one of the security, one with blonde crew-cut hair and a square-jawed face. "Come on… We've already got the other bandits at food processing. Besides, you wanna lose your job over some wasteland dirt bag like that?" Others grumbled in agreement.

____"Hah! Okay… You want to deal with him? Fine by me!" shouted Jimmy. "Tell you what. _You _can untie him and take his sorry self over to the food processing facility. But before you do that, _you_ dress his wounds and clean him up. We can't have dirty slave-labor working with the food." He glanced back at the slumped bandit, then again faced the twins--a leer on his face. "Good luck, ladies."

_____A final angry kick at the ground, and he walked away with the rest of his team. Kyrie and Harrah then rushed to help the tortured bandit, was slumped in the seat--the weight of his chest and arms against the barbed wire. The ragged shirt across his chest was bloody, especially around where the rusted barbed wire had bitten into his flesh. While Harrah splashed cool water on his head, Kyrie worked at the knotted wire and tried to free him. It was never a good idea to give liquids to a person close to unconsciousness; they could choke on it. But they could use it to cool him down a little. "Don't worry…" said one of the twins. "You'll be okay! Just _hang on_!"

_____He half-opened his eyes to look at the beautiful female cyborg standing before him and putting cool refreshing wetness on his face, then he slowly turned his head to the right to look down on the other beautiful one undoing the barbed wire that bound him. Was he seeing double? Such pretty girls… Too pretty to be real… They must be angels! Then the bandit really was free, free from all the troubles of this world--because he was dead just as the last of the barbed wire was undone.

…

_____Later, they washed themselves in the irrigation station showers. It wasn't that cyborgs sweated or became especially dirty, but washing was how they prevented grit buildup. Also, it kept them from accidentally transferring outside grit into the more sensitive machinery they worked with. After washing, the two toweled each other dry. Still, despite their showering and drying, they couldn't wash away the memory of the recent suffering.

_____ Each of the six pump-rooms looked about the same in this large building. The center of the room was dominated by a large, cylindrical industrial machine that gave off a steady rhythmic churning sound. Monstrously thick electrical cables connected it to the wall, the electricity coming from nuclear fusion plants--beneath the ground elsewhere on the farm. At one side was a tall boxy casing that held the regulatory and monitoring machinery. It was a hybrid electronic-analog configuration that the twins understood and maintained themselves. Industrial light bulbs suspended from the corrugated metal ceiling made for light. 

_____Harrah opened up the casing, and both twins looked at the diagnostics panel--seeing dials and green indicator lights. Most of the dials indicated that the pump was working within parameters. But the lubricant was running a little low at one junction. No problem; a slight adjustment would fix that. While Kyrie held open the case, her sister instantly knelt for the toolkit, getting the right wrench to turn an oil-flow adjustment valve below the row of green lights.

_____"That was fast!" said Kyrie, taking the wrench from her sister. After she put the wrench back in this toolkit, she looked up to see her sister in tears. "No… No… Come on, sis! Don't start crying! If you cry, you're gonna make me start too!" It was true. She was already feeling her own eyes water over.

_____"He didn't…have to kill him!" sobbed Harrah, going to her knees on the cold concrete floor. "The bandit…was probably just… Just trying to live and… And…!" She wanted to say, _take care of his family._ But the rest of her sentence was lost in yet more tears. The twins hugged each other, trying to get through this. Life on the farm was hard at times, but never so hard as people had to be tortured to death. 

…

3.

…

_____It was close to sunset. High above, the sky was a deep and almost bloody orange setting beyond extremely far off brown hills. The thin man in oil-grimed coveralls heard the buzzing mechanical chorus of vehicles before he looked up from his work to see. There they were, speeding alongside the path of the train track. It was enough to be a temporary distraction from the task at hand.

_____Up to this point, both the thin man and his big brother had been working by outdoor lamplight--cleaning the parts of a huge, high-powered electric motor on a rusty metal table. Their specialty was vehicles. They weren't as good as Kyrie and Harrah at maintaining most machinery, but they were darned good at fixing anything that had wheels and a motor. Buggies, trucks, harvesters, they dealt with them all. They liked working with machines; they liked working on the farm. 

_____Since their garage was close to the farm's train depot, they were able to see that huge nuclear-powered behemoth whenever it went to and came from the city. The train shipped out farm products to the city and coming back with some printed-out requests for more, along with spare electromechanical machine-parts and other city-made goods. Heck, Scotch and Duct were able to fix the train, too. Overall, though, it was a decent-enough trade. This farm shipped much-needed food products to the city and obeyed the oversight of the Netman robot in Mr. Lionel's office. In turn, the farm received much-needed city-made supplies--electromechanical parts (useful for both cyborgs and agricultural machinery), industrial supplies (like the good machine-lubricants only the city made), and a lease on its extended freedom. The city told the farm what to do, but the city was obedient to Zalem above.

_____Because Mr. Lionel was on good terms with the city, this farm was given a little more freedom from Zalem--the floating city far up and far away, the place that ruled the world. Mr. Lionel was seen as a respectable and obedient gentlemanly sort--literate and refined--and so this farm wasn't under controls as tight found on other farms. He knew how to keep things under control. 

_____So long as the farm kept the agricultural produce coming on those trains, the city left the farm alone. "Netmen" robots and big cyborgs on the train were always glad to see that this farm kept up the supply. But, the odd thing was that the train's schedule had become a lot more lax these days. It only came half the times it normally did. A person noticed something like that after thirty years or so of living and working around here. 

_____And a person noticed when the long peaceful flatness of the nearby desert was interrupted! The caravan of buggies and trucks was doing exactly that: making noise and kicking up a huge, collective dust cloud on their loud way over here. But there was something familiar in the sound of those engines. 

_____"Hey-hey!" went the thin mechanic. His brother paused in his work on a set of steel conductor brushes and looked up. "Duct, who do you think those guys are, huh? Ooh yeah! I've heard those high-rate RPM's revving before! Wouldn't forget 'em for anything! Hee-hee-hee… They sound pretty good!" 

_____Duct was the other mechanic, the bigger one. Not only was Duct several years older than Scotch, but he was also several feet taller. He was _big_ in both the obese and the muscular sense of the word, a massive man with bulging arm-muscles thick as thighs and a massive gut. The blue coveralls and gray shirt he wore were several times the same outfit worn by his little brother. To carry around that bulk, his legs were as thick as oak trees--though such trees had been extinct in the region for centuries. Right now, he was looking in the same direction… He also heard that distant group of engines.

_____"Hmmph… Come on, bro. You can do better than that. If you don't recognize the engines in them buggies, your brain must'a done got soggier than mine." Yeah, Duct knew the sound of those engines as he--and Scotch--had both custom-modified them for a group of wasteland bandits. 

_____Those were the very same bandits were coming this way. Bandits were the sort who lived free and wild, taking what they could from the behemoth-sized trains that went between irrigated farms and cities. But the brothers weren't afraid, _Hell no! _That was because Scotch and Duct were a little wild themselves, running with that pack.The brothers were a little more sane nowadays, though: Scotch a little less hyper and Duct a lot more gruff in attitude.

_____In minutes the assorted buggies were close enough that one could see the rough faces of the rough-dressed group riding them--especially the big muscle-man in the lead car. The vehicles slowed up when they were close, then braked. They got out and began to stride over to here, all of them in ragged pants and shirts covered over with pieces of metal and plastic for haphazard sections of body armor--shoulder-pads, chest-plates and arm-guards. Some of them were cyborgs, and some of them were fleshies--full humans.

_____Their leader seemed to be fully human, a six-foot muscular man in jeans, red shirt and black chest-plate--the skin of his arms and face tanned from the desert light. The boots on his feet weren't as big as the thick boot-like things strapped to the feet and legs of the other bandits, and his red hair wasn't as unruly as the others. His stride was also more controlled. 

_____"Well, well, well…!" said that bandit leader, coming over to this outdoor worktable. "Here you two are, still working as _ha-a-ard _as usual. Duct and Scotch, the two genius brothers of mechanical mayhem…are now reduced to farm-hands!" He looked around, put his fists on his hips. "Nothing much has changed around here, though." Then he lowered his voice, taking on a more sinister tone. "_This, even if the rest of the world has!_"

_____That made the other bandits send up a raucous cheer, all of them growling and pumping their fists in the air. They were all noisy and proud, clapping each other on the back and yelling until the bandit leader raise his left hand--making them go quiet. "What I'm saying is, this quaint little oasis in the desert may not last terribly long as a refuge of backwardness and rigid oppression."

_____"And a 'Hello' to you too, Barabbas," responded Duct, putting down the electric motor-part and worktools he was working with. "But waddaya mean, _the rest of the world_ changed? I ain't seen any changes. How 'bout you, Scotch? You notice anything change?" Scotch put on a big goofy smile and quickly shook his head--rapidly going left-right-left-right-left-right-left-right. "Okay, that's enough. Keep shakin' your head like that an' you'll get yourself dizzy. Alright, you heard us. The world ain't changed… Ain't ever gonna change. All I wanna do is live here and make the most of my life. Yes-sir-ee, just workin' the machines, drinkin' beers and listenin' to the pretty music at the little bar we got on this farm. It's a good life, Barabbas… Better than the life I had out there… Almost got myself killed, if you remember. Got the scar to prove it." 

_____Barabbas nodded. "That I _do _remember, friend! That I do remember… I also remember what a _pessimist_ you always were. But guess what? In the city, the Netmen and the Deckmen had fallen eerily silent, my friend. Bounties stopped being posted… So the bounty hunters that wanted to split your gut open and take your head for planning a flying machine, they aren't quite as interested anymore. _____"Furthermore, there has been a change in the arrangements. All the good stuff that was once reserved for shipment to Zalem no longer goes up those gigantic sucking tubes. The manufacturing plants aren't running as hard as they used to anymore. It was all a mysterious enterprise, deserving an awful lot of thought. 

_____"Do you want to know what happened…my pessimistic comrade? I will tell you…" At this point, Barabbas put his hands on this worktable. Scotch leaned forward as well, anxious to hear. "Why the changes in the world? Why the freedom? The Deckmen and Netmen went silent, the bounties no longer posted, and there was suddenly no need to ever again send goods up to Zalem. Why all this? _Because Zalem killed itself. _One of their fusion reactors went _ka-pow_, and all the big computers in charge up there went _zap!_"

_____"_Wha-a-a-at!_" went Duct. "Barabbas, you alright? I heard some tall tales in my time, but that's about as tall as they come. A reactor in Zalem going on overload? Hah! Hah-hah! Hmmph…" But even as Duct spoke those words, doubt invaded his pessimism. Could it be, maybe…?

_____"_Hee-hee-hee…!"_ screeched Scotch. "That explains everything! I _knew _it!" He began to hop around in a crazy jig of happiness and excitement--ranting as he did. _"I-knew-it-I-knew-it-I-knew-it-I-knew-it-I-knew-it-I-knew-it…!"_ Scotch knew machinery as well as Duct, and both knew that all machines fail at some time in the future without outside maintenance. Zalem, being run by one solitary machine in particular--the Artificial Intelligence-driven mega-computer known as Melchezedek--was a _machine_ that finally failed to keep everything together. "_Hee-hee-hee! _That's what you get for running a city with just _one_ central computer! Barely maintained! Running for all those hundreds of years! You can put in all the darned safeguards you want and all the redundancies you want, but all machines have gotta break down sometime! _Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee…!_"

_____Barabbas thrust a pointing finger at Scotch. "_You've guessed it, Scotch! _And _that's_ what I've always liked about you and your brother. You both know machines better than most anyone! Zalem's dead, and the _world is free and ours! _Free for us to do _what_ we want, _when_ we want, and _how we want it!"_

_____Excited, Barabbas reached into his left pocket and took out a square of clean cloth--opened it up to show the brothers. "Look at this! This is the symbol of the _Revolution_, the thing that's changing the world for the better!" On the cloth was the symbol of a clenched fist, raised against a circle that seemed to represent Zalem. "Look at it, and admire!" Raising it in the air made for a mighty and unrestrained cheer from all the bandits. They were so loud and raucous that they didn't even notice the group of curious farmers sitting near the garage gates. 

_____Those farmers were now up and running, out to spread the word about what happened in the world. It just took word of mouth to finally confirm what they had long suspected. Why hadn't the train come and gone as often as it once had? And why hadn't the Netman in Mr. Lionel's office spoken much? Because the world was different now! Everything was different now. 

_____Within hours, everything around here was going to change as well. Nobody had to worry about losing his head. Nobody had to work all the damned time anymore. And nobody was in charge of the world! Nobody! It was time for big things to start happening on the farm, starting with the riots. 

…

_____Within hours, things were happening in an insane and sinister frenzy of noise and madness. People were running here and there along the roads of the farm compound. Mobs of farmers descended on Mr. Lionel's house and began pounding away at the annealed glass doors. The security cyborgs came out and started killing people left and right as soon as they knew the kind of situation happening. But there were only so many security cyborgs, and there were so many farmers. The security was soon overcome by the sheer numbers of people swinging heavy metal tools… 

_____The battered metal corpses of the security cyborgs were taken to the big open area in front of the administrative building, and some farmers found the big metal platform on wheels that Mr. Lionel sometimes used to make big speeches. Then they found some of the small hydraulic cranes used to lift heavy machine parts and used them to hang up the metal corpses by their necks. But they were sure to leave two of these improvised gallows open: one for that oppressive freak Lionel, one for his weakling son. 

_____Not that the farmers knew it, but they were taking part in the revolution that was collectively taking the farms and the cities. People ran around shouting "_Zalem is dead!_" and "_The world is ours!" _as they took things and ran around all full of energy and anarchy. The Iron Fist Revolution had come to this farm at last.

…

4.

…

_____At their place, Kyrie and Harrah were sitting together at their dinner table, each reading a paperback book they had ordered from the city--metal fingers lightly clasping the pages. Between them, atop the table, was a cassette-player playing songs they'd recorded from the bar. The sound quality wasn't the best, but they didn't mind; it was pretty good for something they had made themselves from ridiculously old parts. It took them weeks of spare weekends to make the tape recorder and a little longer to make the small machine to manufacture the cassettes. Now they had music to enjoy in their own apartment. 

_____Their living space was above their workshop, where these twins kept most of their tools, cyber-equipment and worktables. While their workshop downstairs was often a little cluttered, often had spare tools left out and cases left open, their own spacious one-room apartment was sparse and well-kept. There was a small bookshelf in a corner by the windows, left of which was the well-made bed they slept in. On the other side of the apartment, there was a corner that served as a kitchen--to the left of the door in.

______Thump… _Hmm? Both twins looked up from their reading, wondering if they heard what they thought they heard. This apartment was quiet save for the low music coming from the workshop-made cassette player. As they listened to the distant sound, the singers on the cassette player chanted lyrics while an electric guitar and electronic organ strumming in the background:

…

You see me in foreign fa-a-ace, 

in ships that sink without tra-a-ace… 

In your father's doubt, 

when it brings on s-s-shout…

Behind the burning cross,

the grudged imagined loss…!

When you run to me-e-e, 

run to me-e-e, 

run to me-e-e…

…

______Thump-thump-CLANK!_ This time, along with the sounds, they heard the distant sound of cheering coming from outside. Someone or something was being pounded and beaten out there. Whatever was being destroyed must have finally taken a hard hit, because there was another cheering in the distance. They set down their books as quietly as they could, sat up as quietly as they could with the chair-legs sliding across the hard floor. The cassette player played on:

…

__

Between ideals and fact,

Between the thought and the act…

You sink without trace,

and I hate your face!

…

_____Wide-eyed, the twins stepped across the floor of their apartment, walked over to the window at the right-side corner. The window gave a night-time view of the main road just outside. There were workers, cyborgs and fleshies in coveralls and short-sleeved shirts, running around with armfuls of goods and taking what they could from all sorts of places--food from the food depots, clothes from the clothing storage buildings, and a little of everything from everywhere else. In addition to the road-side streetlamps, there was another source of light coming from farther along the street--some kind of bonfire…

_____The twins looked at each other. Both were thinking the same horrible thing. _It's happening!_ They turned and ran side by side, getting as fast as they could towards the apartment door over there--slamming the door behind them. Then came the sounds of their footsteps pattering down the wide concrete stairs. Another door slammed shut downstairs; they had just run through the garage and left this building. Up here, at the kitchen table, their cassette player kept playing that song--a male and female chorus chanting the dark lyrics.

__

…

You-u-u…

Run from me, 

run from me, 

run from me-e-e…

I'm the Adversary!

…

_____Downstairs and outside, everything was getting about as crazy as they thought. There was little physical destruction, but this was apparently a farm-wide riot. People ran by carrying stuff they'd stolen and were yelling in adulation. Some groups of people were carrying wine bottles, and they were walking towards that big bonfire in the distance--to the far right, along this street. 

_____The source of the trouble must be in that direction… Both of them turned and ran, following the group that was running in the direction of that bonfire. As they ran, Kyrie and Harrah both had horrible thoughts. Apparently, the center of the chaos and trouble was in the direction of the administrative center of the farm…

_____That would be, of course, Mr. Lionel's building. Fear and worry made the twins' breath come in worried gasps as their arms swung and legs pattered out a faster beat in running towards that trouble--the platform with the erected gallows back-lit by a huge fire of chopped-up expensive wooden furniture, expensive clothes, and other things from the building. A lot of other cyborgs had already been hung.

______No… Oh no…!_ _Please don't let it be true. _They finally made it here, skidding to a stop. As the twins weren't as tall as the workers, they gently--but firmly--pushed their way to the inside of the crowd that surrounded the movable platform and the makeshift crane-gallows. By the dancing light of the flames, they saw too much.

_____The cyborgs of Mr. Lionel's security force had all been hung on metal cables. Their hanging metal bodies were cracked opened and ruined. They had been beaten with pipes and tools before they were hung. All of the victims so far were cyborgs. But, as Kyrie and Harrah watched, one more victim was shoved up to the platform with rough hands. A noose of metal cable was put around his neck as well. 

_____It was hard to see the victim, as the huge bonfire made for such a glare that all the figures involved looked like shadowy outlines. "_Look and see, people!_" shouted the big, cloth-and-armored- clad man getting ready to execute another victim. "_It's the one you've all been waiting for even if you don't know it yet! Just remember all the years of back-breaking, finger-bleeding, skin-blistering work you've been doing on this farm. When we kill this one, it finalizes the fact that the farm will be all yours!_" 

_____The big man turned and gave a hand signal to the cyborgs at the winch. Nodding, they began to turn the crank. The crank pulled the cable of the small crane, and the cable pulled up the load--the man at the end of the noose. He was lifted up into the air, and everyone began cheering. It was a massive roar, the anger and excitement all mixed up in a loud cheer of satisfaction as the man died.

_____When the victim finally went dead and still, Harrah and Kyrie were finally able to recognize who had just been hung. The twins only knew one man who wore suits like that, a gentleman who they had known all their lives. Intense misery and fear made them feel dead inside as they looked up at the body of Mr. Lionel… 

_____"_Let's do his retarded son next!_" shouted someone in the crowd, somehow able to be heard above the chaos. Then more rough hands began pushing at someone else. A gawky, thin teenage boy in slacks and buttoned-down white shirt was shoved into the clearing. His hands were bound in front of him. But he was beyond trying to run, looking downtrodden. His will was broken. He let himself be pulled up to the platform, and the big man put an arm around the boy's shoulders as if he was his most favorite buddy in the world.

______No-o-o-o-o! _Everyone went quiet when the high-pitched, piercing scream cut through the night air. In the sudden silence, a person could hear the crackling sound of the bonfire flames and the creaking of the wire cables, the sound of a breeze blowing across the scene.

_____The twins had shouted in unison and had made for a shout that was sure to have shattered some eardrums. In the stunned lull, they walked over to the platform. Barabbas looked down on the two who had interrupted his show. And he smiled. "Well-well-well…! You two are quite a pretty pair. What the Hell do you want, interrupting the show?"

…

5.

….

_____Despite the cooling night breeze, there was a real sense of heat in the air. And it wasn't the bright yellow heat of the bonfire. It was the heat of tension before a hard fight. Barabbas, shadowed by the flames, stared down on the two girls who were challenging him. 

_____ Girls? No, they weren't just that. They were cyborgs. From the neck down, their bodies were metal. Their faces were synthetic flesh, and their long dark consisted of hair strands of spun polymer. Their two pairs of dark eyes challenged him with dual stares--eyes that weren't quite human. 

_____Cyborgs or not, Hell! He had defeated more than a few fools who stood in his way. From rival bandit chiefs to ten-foot bounty hunters, he'd beaten them all! It was a big part of how he gained his reputation. There was no way he would let a pair of kids stand in the way of his greater ambitions--that of conquest. How would that look, a mighty man of his caliber, cut down by a pair of life-sized dolls?

_____This broad-chested bandit leader hopped down from the platform, the dual _thud_ of his boots resounding on the hard road. Clenching his fists, he stood and turned to face the twins who were just meters from where he was. "I could have my men kill you two impetuous brats and hang up your dead bodies, another example of what happens when some stand in the way of the revolution. But, no… Such would be _unfair!_" He raised his left arm, gesturing to the thin, frightened teenager up on the platform. "Do you see that boy?"

__

_____Boy was the right word now, as Mr. Lionel's son seemed smaller and thinner than ever--tears coming from his eyes. "You want him to live, to possibly perpetuate the regime of oppression and hardship? That slow-witted, spoiled son of a rich man…_who served the will of the Floating City of Zalem_? If you two were to take a look at Mr. Lionel's forehead now, you'd see that we've wiped away the makeup that covered up his mark!"

_____Mr. Lionel was a man from _Zalem? _This shocked the twins. They thought that Mr. Lionel was just from the city, like they originally were. He was often quiet about his past, never really wanted to talk about it. All that he had to show from it was his son, Ritchie. Lionel's love had died in childbirth. Kyrie and Harrah thought that Mr. Lionel never talked about the past because of that death. Yet the idea of him coming from Zalem… That would explain a lot.

_____Still, they had made a promise. Whatever happened, the twins wanted to make sure that Ritchie lived. "He's just a boy!" shouted Kyrie. "He hasn't even have a chance to really get started in the world! _Don't you understand? _And what you plan on doing now is killing a boy before he's a man!" 

_____Harrah added, "He hasn't chosen his path in life yet, you know! Look, we can't choose what family we're born into. It's not like Ritchie _wanted_ to be born the son of a farm supervisor. And as long as we've known him, he said that he really never wanted to grow up and be in charge."

_____"So what!" shouted Barabbas. "You could the say the same stupid things about those evil and stuck-up fools in the Floating City! They didn't _choose_ to be born rich and privileged, no more than we--the _poor_ and the _downtrodden--_chose to be born in the toxic-stained gutters of the city and the dirt-hard slavery of the farms! 

_____"Butdidn't they always love to look _down_ on us who lived here on the ground!" he continued, pointing to the dirt at his feet. "While _we worked_ and _slaved away _and _died_ down here to send the sweet and clean products of our labor to the people living in the sky, they let us keep the scraps and the trash. The _scraps,_ you hear? Why else is there a _Scrap Iron City_, hmm? Made from all the junk while all the goods went up… " 

_____Then he pointed to Ritchie and the hung corpses up on the platform. "Zalem is _dead!_ It has become a city of the dead, a _necropolis_, a gigantic floating graveyard of radiation-leaked death when their foolish nuclear power plants malfunctioned. And that damned machine-god Melchezedek went right along with them! Zalem, murdered by a by-product of its own high standard of living…so to speak! 

_____"If _we_ let any of _their _children live, Zalem could again become an oppressive tyrannical machine in the sky. The diaspora of Zalem down here on the ground, all of the rich and pampered products of the regime who escaped, will go back up to that floating city, _rebuild_ Melchezedek, and make things worse than they were before." He clenched his left fist. "The Iron Fist Revolution won't let that happen." 

_____The twin girls closed their own hands into fists. Both had no desire to hurt anyone, but they were bound by their word to protect. "_We keep our promises! We will protect Ritchie!"_ they said in unison. Then the two raised their fists and set their feet apart, taking steps towards Barabbas….

__

_____When someone interrupted. "Sera, don't fight him! You don't know how strong he is!" shouted someone in the crowd. The big-bellied man in coveralls gently pushed his way to the front of the crowd while his brother followed close behind. "He's_ dangerous!_" 

_____Harrah and Kyrie stopped and turned to face Duct. Both twins had the very same expression on their faces--a look of bewilderment and anger. "_You called me that name again! I told you not to call me that anymore!_" they both said in unison. "_I'm someone else now!_"

_____Duct shook his head. "See, Barabbas? The girls have their own personal problems…. Or personality problems, I shoulda' said. They're really smart with machines an' all, smarter than me an' my brother. But they're not right in the head," he said, tapping the side of his own forehead. "Know what I mean? That's why they became cyborgs…long before they were supposed to. They don't know what they're doin' right now."

_____Barabbas tilted his head to the side, and his tone of voice matched his leer. "_R-r-r-really now? _So what I'm dealing with are a pair of mentally ill cyborg girls who want to defend their retarded, inbred little friend? How pathetic!_ Aaah, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…!_ Indeed, only the _insane_ would stand in the way of the Revolution! Ha-ha-ha…!" He crossed his arms and bellowed with laughter, and the crowd laughed with him.

_____ Though no one had struck them physically, all the laughter--all around--felt just as hard and painful as blows to the torso and head. Harrah and Kyrie always thought that they'd gotten along reasonably well with the farmers. They weren't especially close friends with them, but they were able to have conversations with them at the drinking place and listen to the singers up on stage. The twins thought they were friends with most everyone around here. But maybe, the truth was… 

_____It hurt too much, just as all the derision and ridicule around made them feel dead and stepped on. The twins felt their insides growing numb. The sound of the boisterous laughter faded into a roar, with one man being the center of it. Barabbas…

_____The numbness inside became an angry heat--a heat both of the twins felt burning inside them. Unable to contain the pain and hurt they were feeling made them run at Barabbas, wanting to hurt him. To _kill _him. 

…

_____Harrah and Kyrie jumped and lashed out with the same leaping attack--a jumping side-kick. The move was ill-timed as they were too angry to concentrate, too emotional to properly execute the maneuver. Still, it _knocked_ Barrabas back a few steps, shoe-marks on his armored chest-plate where the girls struck. But the bandit leader recovered and took up his own fighting stance. "That wasn't very sporting! Mentally ill or not, I'll have to punish you two."

_____Oh _yeah…_ There was going to be a rumble! With that in mind, some people in the crowd clambered up to the platform and remembered how to turn on the spotlights. The platform's wiring was damaged from the heat of the nearby bonfire, but it still transmitted enough electricity to power the spotlights--which made for a dim circle of light on the road where the combatants were standing.

______Thunk-thunk! _It just seemed as if Barrabas' arms only twitched: They didn't see his fists move at all! But they felt the impacts--the blows that struck their cheeks. Then his left leg seemed to disappear as they were both knocked back and away. 

______He's too fast for the eye to see_, they thought. Yet he seemed to be a full-flesh human being. What kind of mutation let a fleshie move that fast, with that much strength? Whatever… They had to win this fight. The twins stood again, then made a simultaneous swift run at the bandit leader--moving so fast that their legs seemed to blur and their long dark hair trailed behind them like dark banners. 

_____ Instead of both attacking from the front, one of the cyborg twins skidded to a stop while the other ran around behind him. Harrah kicked him in the lower back. When he staggered, Kyrie stepped forward and jabbed him in twice in the chest--the knuckles of her left and right metal fists making solid sounds against the bandit's strapped-together chest-plate. Unlike a cyborg, there _was _a vulnerable body beneath that armor! The blow was enough to make him stagger around, gasping for air. 

_____As the twins closed in, Barabbas did another one of those tricks. He became a smearing blur for a hundredth of a second. Whatever he just did, it was enough to knock both twins up and away--making them crash-land on their backs when they landed. Stunned for only a moment, they went to their knees. 

_____The twins, however, had a last-minute surprise of their own. Kneeling, they put out both arms. Harrah clenched one hand into a fist while opening the other hand--palm forward. Kyrie did the same on her side--presenting the knuckles of one hand and the palm of the other. They closed their eyes as a blue glow seemed to coat their hands…

______What the…?_ Before Barabbas could finally figure out what they were doing, there was a sheer _blast_ of light, heat and sound that left almost everyone with their ears ringing and eyes dazzled. It was so fast that no one was sure _what _just happened even after the fact. They did see Barabbas standing there, gasping and wheezing, his once-shiny chest armor blackened and smoking in places… 

_____The man shook and shimmied, having spasms so hard that he was barely able to keep on his feet. He went down on a knee and looked ready to fall over. Then he sucked in one more breath and shouted, _"Enough!_ If you care so much for the runt, fine! You can have him!" As Harrah and Kyrie stood up, the bandit leader brushed at his armor with both hands and suddenly stood up again, looking no worse than as if he had only tripped. He was not even sweating and looked ready to fight on. 

_____Yet he didn't. "But I don't think the farmers will want you around here anymore. You take the brat, gather some belongings, and you will leave. I'll even see to it that the train is ready. You _take_ him, take him _away_, and leave on the next shipment of food to the city, tomorrow morning. And you never come back to this place."


	2. Chapter Two

__

All The Colors of Yesterday

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 2 

…

_____Some sympathetic farmers "escorted" the twins and the boy back to the garage building--this group walking along this night-darkened main road between farm buildings. The streetlamps only made for pools of light in the smoke-misted air and leaving more darkness than illumination. Indeed, fires of unrest still burned in some buildings. _"You traitors!" _shouted some people from the dark and shadowy roadsides. "_Can't trust anybody anymore, not even the twins!_" Farther along, someone flung a half-full metal bottle of dirty motor oil--hitting Ritchie in the shoulder and making him gasp in pain while the slick liquid dribbled onto the ground. "_Heh, how's _that_ for an import, Zalem boy!_" shouted the attacker.

_____Kyrie and Harrah looked ready to run out and hit someone. But one of the escorting farmers shook his head. There was already enough trouble for one night, too many people dead. And Barabbas was probably looking for an excuse--any excuse--to have Ritchie killed by the mob after all. So the sisters went on, anger with them every step. 

_____They were almost there when one of the farmers spoke up. "I've gotta know, girls…" he said as they moved along. "Everything is going to change around here, and the world belongs to the people. Why're you gonna protect the son of somebody who used to _rule_ us like animals?" 

_____A few more steps passed before one of the twins answered the farmer's question. Looking at Ritchie, she said, "I made a promise to his father. I wasn't exactly the nicest person in the world before I became a cyborg… But this is me trying to do right for a change."

_____"And it's not like he has anybody else," added the other twin. "Where else is he gonna go, huh? His mom died in the city, and some of youguys killed his dad…" Her tone steeled with anger. "It's not like any of _you_ care what happens to him, anyway! 

_____"Aw, don't y'all be that way!" said another farmer. "You weren't there when it all got started, but some of us really done tried to keep 'em from killin' Mr. Lionel. Honest! But people kept on yellin' an' gettin' all pissed-off. When everybody's got a hot-head, you know how they can get! Ain't no sense in talkin' to people when they're all riled up. 'Specially when they've got them metal bodies. Don't exactly know what it is, but havin' a metal body makes some people a little more violent than us fleshies. You know what I mean!"

_____The twins frowned on hearing this. It was true, and they knew it. There were certain aspects of being a cyborg that led to…frustrations. This was especially true as miscalibrated hormone synthesizers in used bodies sometimes lead to intense mood-swings. Some cyborgs sometimes couldn't help doing some of the things they did, especially when surrounded by emotionally charged people doing everything else. 

_____They came to the garage-building. "Now, don't you worry about things," said that farmer. "Most everyone's done with all their craziness an' carryin' on. I don't think anybody else's gonna be strung up tonight. Y'all pack some stuff and try to get some sleep, y'hear?"

_____Harrah opened the door and let Ritchie in while Kyrie nodded. They went inside their garage building and closed the door behind them. They couldn't lock the ground-floor workshop, never had to lock it before. Putting things in front of the door was useless, because the door swung outward. All they could do was leave the door closed. Their apartment on the second floor, though, did have a lock. 

…

_____Inside the apartment, things were largely as Kyrie and Harrah had left them. The light was still on above the kitchen table, the books they'd been reading left open to pages had they stopped at. The cassette player on the kitchen table had stopped playing, the cassette having run out of tape. Those two chairs were pulled away as if in waiting for their occupants who'd left in such a hurry. 

_____"Oh… I'll go get another chair," said Kyrie, going towards the part of the apartment where they slept. She came back with a third chair to set at this table while Harrah stood there with Ritchie, his tear-streaked face rigid with misery. "Here you go… Why don't you just sit down? We can talk about this."

_____The boy slowly and stiffly sat, as if his legs were metal and were badly in need of oil. The way the kitchen light shone down on his face, at that angle, it made his saddened features seem even more darkened with misery. His lower lip quivered, and another tear came down from an eye.

_____"Hey, don't cry!" cheered Kyrie. "Everything's gonna be alright tomorrow. Just you wait and see!" She looked across the table to her twin. "Listen… They let us take the train. _The train! _We're going to move to the city, get ourselves good jobs, and make a new life for ourselves. It'll be _great! _This farm was getting a little boring anyway." 

_____Despite the bright enthusiasm and cheerful words, Harrah heard the quivering undertone of sadness in her sister's voice. Harrah knew Kyrie as well as she knew herself, and she knew when her twin wasn't exactly being honest with someone. 

_____But she went along with it. After all, Ritchie needed more support than they did. "Yeah! There's all kinds of stuff in the city. They've got gladiator matches and motorball games… _Motorball! _And books! They make them right in the city. The food will be a little boring, not as good as it is out here, but think of all the other stuff we can enjoy! If you couldn't stay around here, your father would've wanted you to go to the city."

______"_Father…_" muttered Ritchie. And that was when he broke. He clutched his face in his hands and felt as if everything had collapsed down on him. To him, everything was gone now. All the bountiful, sun-colored happy days of life around the farm, all the care of his father, all the comfort of home was dead tonight. Everything was done. _His world was broken._ He put his head down on the table and began to shake with sobs. 

_____Harrah and Kyrie felt their own tears coming as the boy cried himself to sleep at their table--him wearing clothes similar to his father's style--his dead father. Gently and carefully, Harrah carried him over to their bed while Kyrie double-folded the blanket. The mattress wasn't too soft as it was designed to handle the weight of more dense cyborg bodies, but the blanket would make it comfortable. 

_____With Ritchie going to sleep, they set to packing--putting some of their more prized possessions in a chest-sized satchel. It was just so hard for them to decide what to take, and they only had so much room in the cloth bag. They had an entire bookshelf of books they'd collected over the years, and then there were all the notebooks of technical ideas they'd had. The cassette player was on the table, and there were more cassettes carefully arranged in a drawer. And what about all their favorite outfits they sometimes like to wear to celebrations and events.

_____It took several hours for them to pack their most valued things in the satchel--their notebooks and books, the cassette player, and two outfits. (Who knows? Maybe they would have to look extra-pretty for job interviews? Their metal bodies were pleasing to the eye, but bare metal was only appealing to an extent. Besides, some of the outfits bolstered their confidence.) When they were done packing, they pushed the table and chairs in front of the door just in case and slept on a spare blanket.

…

_____The next morning was a low-key affair. When sunrise broke over the Eastern skyline, there was a loud _bang-bang-bang_ at the door. "_Y'all wake up! Time to get up an' go-o-o-o!" _Harrah and Kyrie sat up in a hurry and awoke Ritchie. It was a little hard to do that, though: He wanted to sleep. And he had little to say before they did some quick washing up. The twins then pushed aside the kitchen table and chairs out of the way , no longer needing to block the door anymore. 

_____Oddly enough, there were few signs of things having really changed here on the farm. Farmers were still heading for the fields to handle chores, tending the crops. And the occasional truck still rumbled by. There were some broken windows, and two storage buildings had been pillaged--burned. But life was still going on as usual. Well, why not? People still had to eat, and whoever was running the city now--in the absence of Zalem control--was willing to keep doing business with this farm.

_____When they came to the train depot at the far end of the farm's administrative compound, they found that Barabbas was true to his word: The massive, nuclear-powered train was prepared and ready for a trip towards the city. This behemoth of alloyed steel and massive wheels was almost as tall as a one-story house--the storage cars forming a group half as long as the farm itself. Though the engine-man was going to stay here on the farm for a while, he said he had set the thing to automatic. It was just going to be a day's ride. And if anything went wrong, they had but go to the engine car and operate the countermeasures. 

_____They boarded the car behind the engine, which was makeshift temporary living quarters. Small windows set in the sides would give views of the scenery they would pass through. A pull of a lever and a turn of a valve, and the huge train began to grind its way away from the depot. Then Kyrie found a blue cassette tape next to the Full Stop button on the control console. _Funny,_ she thought, _I thought we packed all of our tapes._ She put it in the satchel… 

…

2.

…

_____Barabbas sat on a red-painted steel chair, set front of his customized truck--his jeans and shirt freshly washed, boots scrubbed, armor polished. The large knobby wheels and metal surface of his truck had been recently washed after having undergone maintenance. The brothers Scotch and Duct were really good at what they did and put quality into their vehicular work. Looking at those two, this wild-haired bandit-leader leaned back and crossed his thick meaty arms across the shiny chest-plate he still wore…despite the heat. Cyborg or not, he looked as if he could easily hold out against any metal-bodied opponent in a fight--which he had again proven last night. 

_____He looked past his two former bandit-comrades in work-clothes, looked beyond them and at their garage--a large blocky building with a fenced-in paved lot. Behind and beyond that were the farm-fields, which the farmers and workers still kept running. But this time, they were running it by themselves and _for_ themselves. For how long, who knew? Barabbas was just satisfied that he'd gotten rid of another bastion of Zalemite power.

_____"You know… You two could do better for yourselves elsewhere, other than here," said the big bandit leader. "I grant you that this rather rural setting has a degree of bucolic charm. However, charm has its limitations. The time eventually comes when one must seek out wider venues of higher potential. I'm referring to the _open land_, friends! Think of it… The land is vast and wide, and there is much work to be done. _Much _work! You can do important things! Travel to new places!"

_____Scotch suddenly leaned forward in his chair, grinning as mad as usual with his hands clutching his denim-covered skinny knees. "Hee-hee-hee…! But it's so darned _boring _out there sometimes, Barabbas. Yeah, yeah, I know…! Going really fast is fun, yeah! And raiding farms was really, _really_ fun. Oh yeah…! But going from place to place _just takes…so…long!_"

_____"My little brother's right…for once," went Duct. "We just keep goin' place to place…to place… All the darned time. Sometimes we get would what we need, an' sometimes some dang-on cyborgs would put up a darned good fight--even if we used _guns_! I got tired of that. So fer now, least, I just wanna lean back and enjoy life a little." When big-bellied Duct leaned back in his seat, the metal creaked under his weight. "All of that runnin' around, carryin' on like that, got to me." 

_____"Hmmph. So… You have come to a rut in the path of life," countered Barabbas. "You would prefer a life of simple and prolonged labor to the wide-open and thrilling vistas of the new world? The world we must make over? Also, about the raiding… You two are quite wrong about our gang's actions nowadays. We no longer conduct raids for necessities. 'Bandits' is a misnomer. You see, what we do these days is what we have done here. We travel to places and spread the word of Zalem's demise. Oh, but I am not the only one. _We_, the people, are setting things right and undoing the unjust oppression imposed by that tyrannical city above. Think of it… Freedom, justice, and _progress!_ Don't you want to be a part of the Revolution?"

_____"Pshaw!" went Duct. "'Revolution,' haw-haw… I ain't some kinda rabble-rouser. Like I said, my trouble-making days are _done_. My brother an' me like to work on vehicles an' build machines…. Help people out… Know what I mean? We don't care who's in charge so long as they let us do what we wanna do." He lowered his voice. "Besides, I don't like killin' people an' makin' people cry."

_____"You mean…" Barabbas thought back to last night. "Oh, _that!_ Well my friend, one must break a few eggs to make a breakfast at times. To make way for the new, we must eliminate some of the old. Think of all of those who had lost their heads to bounty hunters for building flying machines…which were _outlawed_ by the likes of your Mr. Lionel up in Zalem and that infernal Melchezedek! I am being cruel to be kind, much as becoming a cyborg involves an uncomfortable period of adjustment."

_____"Hee-hee-hee… It's being good to be nasty…_to a nasty world!_" giggled Scotch. "So it's _nasty-good! _Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee…!" Anything else the thin mechanic would have contributed to this discussion was lost in a mad fit of spasmodic giggling. 

_____"Point is, though, I ain't goin' anywhere," said Duct. "Barabbas… Anytime you need yer vehicles tuned up or RTG packs replaced, you know you can count on me. Still, I gotta say 'no' this time. Besides, there ain't too many workers 'round here good with machinery--'specially since Kyrie and Harrah done left. Zalem control or no, we still gotta help keep this place runnin'."

_____Smiling, Barabbas again looked over at that large repair place run by the brothers. "If that's your final answer, then I suppose this is goodbye." He nodded to them, folded up his chair and took it around to the back of his truck. Then he opened up the driver-side door of the huge vehicle and climbed in. The powerful dual-electrical motor roared to life when he started it up--a deeper and steadier sound since the brothers had worked on it. He gave a wave of goodbye with one hand while the other hand put the gearshift into reverse. 

_____ For the few hours remaining of that morning, Barabbas went around the rest of the farm compound to check on the members of his gang. He was glad to see that some of them were socializing with the workers and farmers, asking about the work they did. And, would you look at that! Some were even helping out. Half of his gang was spending their time in the only drinking place on this farm. It was easy to find: a two-story structure near the (former) administrations building with a sign that said "Beer" over the door. He parked his truck next to the building and went in.

…

_____Inside, the drinking place was much like every other bar, restaurant, and café he'd seen before. Barabbas noticed a sort of commonality among all the places of this sort. They all had tables arranged throughout the main area, with a drinking bar set in one corner of the indoor space--high stools set in front of the counter. And sometimes, there would be stages where musicians would sing. There weren't too many locals here; most of those at the tables and at the bars were his people.

_____There was no one on stage right now, though--though he suspected someone did the singing around here nights, after the work days were done. Too bad. Speaking of _work… _Barabbas saw Penumbra sitting at a table alone and drinking wine. He supposed she was a pretty female cyborg in most ways: a slim body (of metal), a smooth-skinned face and dark green ceramic eyes that matched her head of dark green hair--done up in a large ponytail. She looked up at him as he walked over to her table.

_____Barabbas had himself a seat. "So… Everything's done for our next excursion, I take it?" he said above the din of the place. She nodded once. "We have food loaded, water tanks filled, and our vehicles checked then?" She nodded again. "_Good!_ I'm glad I can still trust my trusty crew!" 

_____She tilted her head to the side and smirked. It was the sort of look that meant, _Don't be stupid._ "All of the tasks were long completed within the first few hours of daylight," said the cyborg. "From the look on your face and the tone of your voice, it seems that you have been disappointed recently. And I am guessing…that our two former associates will not be joining us in our continued journeys. Likely, they prefer the stable and more steady lifestyle."

_____"Hmm… Ha! You never cease to amaze, Penumbra," said Barabbas. Like many other female cyborgs, Penumbra's (synthetic) good looks were designed to resemble someone young--late teens or early adulthood. It was easy to forget that she--her brain--was two hundred years old. A person could learn a lot about people in that amount of time, enough to surprise those who didn't have a hundred years or so of life experience. "I'm glad I have you along," he commented.

…

_____Barabbas and his bandits lined up their various vehicles at the south-western part of the farm, next to some of the fields. The farmers and workers waved and shouted while some of the bandits did some of the same, expressing the same feelings. Heck, _bandits? _They had been the nicest, most helpful and well-behaved "bandits" the farmers had ever seen. Any time they needed food and water, they were always welcome back--especially if they bring more news about the things happening in the world! They were sad to see Barabbas and his gang leave, going in those big heavy vehicles of theirs--speeding across the big flat desert to new places out there…

_____Amidst all the cheering and happiness, one tall worker looked seriously at his blonde wife. "You know what I wanna do now, right?" She nodded. Barabbas and his people had told them of the wonderful things that the Revolution was doing now in the world. They knew that there was something locked away on this farm that could add to the greatness of what Barabbas and his bandits were doing. 

…

3.

…

_____Back at the farm, during the afternoon break-time, there was a sudden silence in the drinking place. A breeze blew across the road, carrying dust. Then… _Kablam!_ The doors seemed to explode, suddenly swinging outward. 

_____An angry-faced farmer had flung open the door, followed by a group of workers. They made their way down the roadside--all of them heading for one place in particular. The close-fisted swagger in their stride and the steely look in their eyes indicated that they were going to do _something_. Other people at the roadside were sure to stay out of the way as they went about their own business. 

_____Their minds were filled with anger and years of it. Generations of it! Barabbas' gang had spread the word about the world as it was now--and who made it so hard in the first place. It was those soft-handed lazy fools in the floating city: the Zalemites! If it weren't for _them_, generations of farmers and workers wouldn't have had to work so darned hard all the time. Now, some of those Zalemites had escaped to the ground before something had gone wrong up there.

_____They couldn't start hunting down the children of Zalem just yet… They were just farmers and workers, and most of them didn't know how to fight. But if one had the right kinds of guns, they didn't need to learn how to use blades or staffs. And there was one place in particular, right here on this farm, that probably had the best guns and weapons in the world! Besides, guns weren't illegal anymore! Zalem made guns illegal, and Zalem…was…_dead!_

_____Why they didn't go with Barabbas, they weren't sure themselves. But they had been thinking about what Barabbas' group said. And maybe after too many drinks, they'd gathered up courage enough to begin to start doing something. Soon enough, they came to the building that was Harrah and Kyrie's machine-workshop. At the side of the building was an outside door, sealed with heavy chains and locks across the door. 

_____"Aw, shoot!" shouted Dan. "Somebody help me with these danged locks!" Several of the workers in his mob were hefty cyborgs. With a little effort, they snapped the metal attachments between the locked chains and the door. The way in was easy after that. Everyone rushed in, and someone found a light-switch and clicked it on.

…

_____Inside, it was apparent that this was an entirely separate partition to the two-story building--plenty of room for the arsenal: a very tall and very long room. Oh _yes, _it was an arsenal! There were plenty enough odd-shaped pistols, rifles, body armor and even small vehicles to equip an ancient platoon of warriors…if one didn't mind that none of the weapons were standard and all of them were of different shape. There were the works on the tables as well, with dusty computer consoles and machine-tools. In the center of the space was a metal cabinet that must hold yet even more weaponry. Someone gave a low whistle of admiration. _We-e-e-e-o-o-ow…_

_____Everyone did a very slow look up, down and all around. The walls were festooned with all kinds of projectile weaponry--all of them concocted by a machinery genius who had a very serious and very secret gun-fetish. All the workers knew about Dr. Sera's "secret" hobby, how she would sometimes spend entire nights in here and come out with her long red hair looking wild and her lab coat wet with perspiration. She went away one day, and all that she left behind were those twin cyborg-girls of hers--who locked this secret place up. 

_____"_Go-o-o-lly!_" went Dan. "Oh _heck_ yeah! We can make sure them Zalemites _never_ get back to Zalem! Them freaks, makin' us people on the ground work so darned hard all the time. Make me wanna kill people…. Boys, get yerself some _weaponry!_" And that was all they needed to hear!

_____With all the frenzy of a mob, they began to raid this place. These farmers and workers went to the walls and to the tables, grabbing those rifles and pistols and other guns. No one had ever seen these kinds of weapons before, all of them custom-made, but they all looked easy enough to use: just take aim and squeeze the trigger! 

_____In all the crazy grabbing madness, Dan's attention was drawn to that large blue cabinet in the center of the room. It was first a whim that made him want to open it up and peek inside, a whim pushed along by curiosity. Then the curiosity grew into a stronger feeling…. He now felt compelled him to walk towards it. 

_____For him, all the noise and frenzy seemed to disappear. There seemed to be just him…and the big cabinet. He really wanted to know what was in that big blue thing. Almost without thinking, he found himself pushing aside the now-empty tables and walking towards that blue cabinet. What could be so precious that it had to be closed away in what was already a locked-up workshop? 

_____It wasn't locked, and the cabinet door creaked open. Inside was a mad spaghetti-string mass of multi-colored wires that connected things to other things--computer circuit-boards here and there with switches put in. There were some metal joints and rivets visible beyond the wires, as if all of this hand-made computer hardware was placed over something else. 

_____"What the heck…?" Dan didn't know _what_ all this was. Shoot, he was expecting something _special!_ He randomly flicked a few switches. It made some red lights come on, then some blue lights followed. Each switch made something light up. Then he found one particularly heavy switch and flicked it to the _ON _position_._

_____This made for a deep whirring sound from within the cabinet--a deep thrumming. Was that a _growl?_ Dan had seen a great deal of machinery before, from water filtration devices to electromechanical attachments for cyborgs, but he didn't think he'd ever seen anything like this. And he especially didn't know what he was doing! For example, he didn't know that he'd activated the fail-safe single-command lockout.

_____One of the circuit boards had an LED display attached, which suddenly blinked into life. The words _STATE TARGET…STATE TARGET…_scrolled across, shown in letters made of small red lights._ "'_State Target?' he muttered. Then the idea of one particular person came to mind--a descendant of Zalem. "Ritchie…!" he muttered. 

______STATE_ _TARGET…CONFIRMED, _went the scrolling LED text display_. _A massive _roar then _sounded from within the cabinet. Dan backed away as there were whirring and grinding sounds from within it, the huge cabinet shaking as something was happening in there. He was knocked unconscious when the thing inside burst its way out--a chunk of out-flung circuit board hit him in the head. He died soon after, the blow making for brain hemorrhaging. Oddly enough, the lyrics to some old song echoed through his head, his mind passing into the breeze. _You try to hide, but I'm by your side… You run from me, run from me, run from me…_

…

_____A half-hour later, the massive metal beast--awakened from its electric prison--was midway through a systematic rampage of destruction, fire and death. The thing was twice the height of an average male cyborg and three times as wide and thick. It had huge construction-machine arms and pillar-like legs, with a massive three-tined claw-hand on one arm and a head-sized plasma-cannon on the other. Its mechanical claw-hand broke walls as easily as it broke metal bodies, and the arm-cannon fired Hellish blasts of nuclear-heated air. 

_____Farmers and workers saw what it was doing and tried to stop it. They put up a noble fight, trying to shoot it with secretly stashed weapons and throw things at it. Some even tried to use dynamite. But there was no stopping this thing. When someone finally tried ramming a truck into the robotic beast as it stomped along the street, it simply pivoted around on its circular-jointed metal waist and let loose with a plasma blast. 

_____The truck slowed to a stop, a flaming wreck with the front melted in. Smoke billowed up to the blue sky above as the sounds of the fire crackled in the passing breeze. _Whi-r-r-r…CLANK! _That beast, that war-machine, had turned itself back around. Then came a booming baritone voice. "_I ASK AGAIN! WHERE IS RITCHIE?"_

_____"He's gone, you monster!" shouted a kneeling woman next to a building, clutching her dead husband. "Why don't you go somewhere else and find him! They took the train… Going towards the city! You've done enough killing around here! You… You _demon_!"

______"INCORRECT IDENTIFICATION," _boomed the deep voice. "_I am the ADVanced VERSAtile independent weapons platform unit: ADVERSARY version 3.6. If my target is not located here, then I will move to the next area. HAVE A GOOD DAY." _As the woman buried her face in her husband's still chest, the gigantic metal monster--the Adversary--stomped its way towards the train depot as the dark smoke of more recent destruction billowed up towards the sky like burned dark clouds. 

…

_____The Adversary pondered the heavy twin rails that stretched off into the desert distance for a moment, growling to itself. Then it whirled around and directed its optical sensors along the rails--noting the lack of a train. Its thick simple electronic mind contemplated the situation, calculated variables, then chose a course of action. First it had to get to the rails.

_____ Whirr-_CLANK! _It set one big blocky metal hoof on the left rail_. _Whirr-_CLANK! _Then it set down the other metal hoof on the right-side rail. _Whir-r-r-r…_ It aimed its massive arm-cannon backward and somewhat downward. This place was hot, but things became a great deal hotter when the cannon began firing a wide _blast_ of bright blue super-heated air--like a rocket.

_____In this way, it began to pick up speed. Its thick metal hooves were on the rails and spraying sparks while its arm-cannon made for blasting head backward. The Adversary's electronic brain allocated much of its processing power to maintaining the mobility and energy--also calculating its rate of acceleration against the distance to the nearest city region and the average speed of a train. The Adversary was on its way, its sole purpose now to destroy the target simply identified as _Ritchie_…

__

…

4.

__

… 

_____Their custom-made dune buggy was moving very fast--and very loudly--along some of the more sandier parts of the flat wasteland field. This vehicle's body was a solid framework of titanium alloy tubing: equipped with big knobby synthetic-rubber wheels in the back and smaller steering tires up front. The engine was a semi-enclosed electromechanical rotary engine, powered by several micro-fusion packs--with dual radio-thermic generators for backups in the casing itself. To keep things simple, the vehicle's transmission was simply one big gear attached to a gear around the rear axle. It was a vehicle that was reliable, maneuverable, and extremely feisty. Better yet was how it needed no chemical fuel no matter how fast or how far they drove this thing. Technically, the combined power supply could last several hundred years: So long as the radio-thermic generator batteries were radioactive, the thing would continue working. 

__

_____"Hee-hee-hee…!" giggled Scotch above the screaming engine-whine as he swerved the car into a fierce drifting turn--just before he stomped down on the accelerator. It made for a mad spray of sharp brown grit as the tires spun out--a spray as mad as his wild-looking eyes hidden behind driving goggles. When the tires found enough purchase, the vehicle jetted forward again. "_We've got some real fun now! Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee…!_"

_____Of course, Duct was strapped and buckled in on the passenger side--his goggles and clothes just as dusty. Yes, he made sure that there would be plenty of room for both himself and his crazy little brother. He shook his head at the brash maneuvering…and wincing whenever Scotch turned or braked a little too hard. Heck, this vehicle was tougher than most construction vehicles: a head-on impact at full speed would kill the drivers before it damaged this dune buggy. He cared about this vehicle. Still, it had to be tested every so often. 

_____Wait a minute… Shaking his head, he reached up to wipe some grit away from his goggles. Was he seeing things right? He leaned forward a little, which was as far as the safety belts would let him. There was smoke in the distance. Duct muttered something obscene, but it was lost in the speedy engine noise and the passing breeze. Then he spoke up, _yelling_, telling his brother to steer on back to the farm.

______Wh-what? _Scotch looked once, then looked twice. He saw what was happening too. Smoke was never a good sign! A turn of the steering wheel, and he has this buggy going straight back towards the farm. The engine in back took on a slight red glow, becoming even louder as Scotch floored the accelerator. They were soon going well over two hundred kilometers per hour and going faster still. It didn't seem fast enough. This was taking far too long.

_____As they sped across the hot flatness, there seemed to be too much time for all the worst thoughts to come to mind. What, did one of the fusion power plants blow up? Aw Hell, those things were too old! They should've better-maintained the turbines and cooling systems! Or there could have been a blow-up at the food-processing plant: all of that in-processed food material would've made for a nasty fire that would be ridiculously hard to put out… Then there would be hard times for a while, as in there not being much food to eat for a while.

_____They went faster still. Even the slightest and longest depressions in the hardpan surface felt like a solid hump. And the knobby tires weren't making things feel any better. Scotch and Duct were soon somewhat aware of the heat at their backs as the engine's red glow deepened. They didn't care. What mattered was getting back to the farm to see what was up!

…

_____Scotch began to slow this buggy well before getting too close to the edge of the compound area, where most of the smoke seemed to be coming from. He still had to put the thing in a controlled skid to stop. The irrigated plots of food-crops were fine; it was the buildings--and the people-- that seemed to be in trouble. "Get me outta this thing, will ya?" grunted Duct as he fumbled with the seatbelts. Both he and Scotch were out of the vehicle before long--Duct hobbling along as fast as he could while his brother moved in a light jog.

_____A disaster had happened here…. More than one disaster, from the looks of things. Most of the buildings were intact and untouched by whatever accident had happened. Yet the damaged ones were holed through, as if gigantic rods of fire blasted them through. "Hey guys, help us fix this thing!" shouted somebody over by a burning, half-ruined building. 

_____A group of workers were shaking parts of a long water-hose and trying to get more water going. The problem was that something was keeping water from getting from the water pump station. Duct and Scotch moved as fast as they could along the hot, smoky street and over to the pump. Somebody didn't turn up the tolerance on the pump's servomechanisms.

_____Soon, the water hose was going again and spraying water into burning, damaged buildings. The brothers helped out when and where they could while people were screaming for help and screaming in pain over here and over there. The only people not helping out were either injured or dead. Everyone and everything was just hot and dirty, covered with soot and grime while the sun burned overhead and the flames seemed to burn everywhere. The farmers were all on their own out here to deal with this. Unlike far-back and almost forgotten ancient times, there was no emergency service: no fire department or public rescue. 

_____It was all the more reason to work harder to save the farm. At one point, Duct was beginning to feel a little…woozy. He was helping to shovel still-smoking debris away from a building when a feeling of light-headedness began to overcome him. His shovel dug into some rubble, but then he found that he didn't have the strength to lift it up again. Dang it, he couldn't believe that he couldn't lift this tiny little bit of crap! Angry at himself, _he tried to bend over and everything…was washed in a white glow…before fading into black…_

…

_____…_And then he was somewhere else. Or was he? This was still the farm. He was sitting on a lumpy mound of plastic at the roadside, next to the door to the drinking place. Comfortable and shaded by the big sign, he was sipping cherry-flavored lemonade out of a polished dog's skull. (The skull had come from a big dog with black fur. Duct didn't know how he knew this; he just knew it.) The reddish sky was high overhead, carrying winds that smelled like burning wood, and everyone else was walking backwards--dressed in candy-colored pajamas. _

_____To anyone else, under any other circumstances, this would all be a little abnormal. Duct didn't mind it, though. He didn't even mind the reddish powdery texture of the road--how it looked like powdered rust. He just accepted all of this as the normal course of things. 

______Because when a person is in a dream, everything can seem normal. But what seemed a little abnormal was the burning bus that slowly drove along this road. There it was, all filled with a big raging flame. The tires had melted too. But the driver didn't seem to mind…even if he was…_

_____Who, or what, was the driver? Duct couldn't be sure just yet. He stared harder. Seen through the flames, the driver seemed to be a bare-chested muscular man with skin the color of blood. His eyes were glaring straight ahead as his clawed hands gripped the hot metal steering wheel. No, that wasn't a man at the wheel. That, my friend, is a monster!

_____Duct sipped the last of the cherry-flavored lemonade from his polished dog-skull cup and stood up from the plastic mound--which turned out to be a half-molten, chopped-up mannequin. As he approached the slowly moving burning bus, he could feel the heat from the flames. Then someone began grunting and laughing as everything became covered over with a brighter golden glow as warm and comfortable as the setting sun…

… 

_____When Duct began to wake up, the laughter seemed to become the giggling of his crazy brother. "_Hee-hee-hee…! _See, Duct's tough! It's probably because he's mean all the time, even to himself!" Someone was dabbing his forehead with a watered cloth, and he a layer of felt cool wetness against his back… He had been stripped down to underwear and had been put in a bathtub bottomed with water, indoors. Eyes open, he saw that his brother and one of the farm-women were now tending him.

_____Sure, as if he was some kind of invalid! "Dang-nabbit, I ain't _helpless!_" he said, suddenly easing himself up in the tub. He was able to see around even though his head was full of headache and making a Hell of a lot of pain. This was the basement of the farmer's barracks, cool and low-lit. There were beds around as others were being tended for burns, smoke inhalation and heat-related conditions--just as Duct was. The farm was pulling themselves together even without apparent leadership, because there was no one there to try and provide it. 

…

5.

…

_____This train was going along for some time now, and the three were sitting around in the driver's lounge behind the engine car. Thank goodness the noise-reducing insulation was decent and the air conditioning was working. Nobody wanted to put up with the immense mechanical racket of a nuclear train's engine churning and clanking at high speed. They could still hear some of the noise through the walls, but it was tolerable. Other than the noise, this was a decent little apartment-space…going along at nearly a hundred miles per hour.

_____Ritchie was lying on the bed opposite the sofa, looking around and listening to the tinny music coming of the of the cassette player. The satchel was next to the sofa, open and exposing some of the contents. The songs were familiar but sounded a little weird to him… Harrah and Kyrie had set up their cassette player on the table a while ago, still had it turned way up while they sat next to each other on the sofa, both reading paperback books that looked a little worn out. Their big dark eyes reflected the white pages covered with typed writing. 

_____The twins… They were very pretty--faces with such smooth, creamy skin and beautifully shaped cheeks. And there was something about their eyes, big and glossy as their silken dark hair. Their bodies were just as beautifully shaped, long and lithe with gentle curves in all the right places--their crossed legs being of nice shapes. He found himself staring. 

_____Before Kyrie and Harrah would take notice, he diverted his focus to other features of this train car. The ceiling was painted with a thin sort of powdery metal paint, and there was an odd and sturdy light fixture up there. That light was always on, though plenty of light came in from the windows. Nothing was happening out there, nothing but the rolling and flat scenery of the desert wasteland interrupted by the occasional view of some ruined unknown vehicles or bombed-out settlements. But generally, there was nothing out there just desert and more desert with low brown hills in the distance and the blue sky overhead. Even from inside this air-conditioned space, the outside looked hot and boring.

_____He then flopped around on the bed to look at the cracked video screen set next to the front door--the door that connected this cabin to the inside of the engine car itself. As far as he could tell, the video screen was some kind of security device that gave random rear-views of the train. The cameras were placed high up and back on the rearmost cars--probably installed to warn against pursuing bandits and other potential dangers.

_____Like a glimpse of something big and strong behind this train, also riding the rails. He sat up on the bed and slowly walked over to the cracked video screen to get a better look. _Flick…_ No, he didn't want that view, but he didn't see which button to push to switch views. So he waited. _Flick…_ No, that was the wrong view too! Hurry up, hurry up! _Flick…_ There it was: an armored beast twice the size of a construction cyborg with one arm back and blasting flames. The other arm had a nasty, gigantic, metal, three-fingered claw-hand, stained with dried…

______Flick… _He sat down hard, or fell down from shock. The twins looked up from their reading. "Hmm? What's wrong, Ritchie?" asked one of them. "Have to use the bathroom or…something…?" Their eye-focus followed the direction Ritchie was staring in, at the monitor. _Flick…_ Then they saw it. Both felt a sudden and sickeningly sinking feeling inside when they saw it--recognizing it instantly.

_____The feeling was replaced with sudden anger. _"Those fools! What did they do!"_ shouted the twins simultaneously. They put their books on the table and went over to the video screen. _Flick…_ One of them found the embedded button in the wall that manually changed the view back to the one of the far rear. And they saw the Adversary.

_____Seeing that war-machine brought back memories common to both of the girls--distant ones. They remember the secret weapons workshop, the sealed-off partition to their garage. Guns… Rifles… They built the most wonderful, awesome weapons. Building them and looking at them, touching and holding them made them feel…_so…go-o-od_. But their darkest and most rapturous time was when they built _that_ thing. 

_____Now that they were more sober and clear-headed cyborgs, the twins could only look at the thing and feel disgusted at what they had wrought so long ago. It was from their dark flesh-bodied past, becoming cyborgs. Now they saw their gun-fetish as something obscene and grotesque, hoped to forget it. But the Adversary could not be forgotten now as it was pursuing them.

_____Ritchie somehow found his voice. "We… We've gotta _get away from the monster! _Maybe… Maybe this train can go faster! Yeah, yeah!" He tried to get to his feet but was too panicky to do that. The boy was too scared and nervous to move. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was still getting used to the fact that his father was gone and some bandit-leader turned the farmers and workers against him. Now this was a fresh shock to the nightmare that was becoming his life: something else coming after him. 

__

_____One of the twins helped shaky Ritchie over to the bed while the other opened up the train cabin's front door--bringing in the loud clattering of the train's engine room. They had worked on this train before: once before. But they understood the upgraded hybrid control configuration, because they designed it and installed it with assistance from other farm mechanics. 

_____Inside the noisy and small engine room was a low stool bolted to the floor, in a small space wide enough for one wide person--like the chubby old man who ordinarily ran this thing--or two thinner people. There were pipes and turn-valves on one side and simple sturdy electronic control-switches on the other side. Each switch was clearly labeled in several languages. 

_____ Harrah sat on the left side of the stool and Kyrie sat on the right--both of them facing opposite ends of this small room of pipes and switches. One twin was facing the analog regulator valves while the other faced the electronic switches. "_The steam's open at sixty-three percent!" _shouted Harrah. "_We should open up valves three through six._"

_____"_We'll need more steam pressure, at least twenty percent more PSI! Let's turn up the flash converter!"_ shouted Kyrie. She then flicked several heavy switches and turned up a rheostat. This increased the steam pressure by making the burningly hot electric heating coils in the engine burn even hotter--spinning the turbines ever faster. It was easily within the capabilities of the train's engine to do that, since the source of the heat was nuclear.

_____Trouble was, they could crank it up too much. Some of the original technology that built this train was long-gone; some of the parts and repairs weren't according to the specifications its original designers. There was always the risk of a turbine blade shaking loose and hitting the engine's casing while clanking around and smacking all the other turbine blades--turning the inside of the hot casing into a shrapnel-filled Hell. Then the great big turbine would explode in a blast of nuclear-heated steam and bullet-fast shards of hot metal.

_____So, it was either they face the Adversary or they risk blowing up the front of this car. Maybe, _maybe_ they would survive an explosion. But Ritchie… _No. _The twins tweaked up the RPMs of the engine's output as high as they dared, hearing the engine noise get noisier still and feeling the engine car shake and shimmy. This was a great big freight train, not a fighting and speeding motorball cyborg built for racing! Hmm… Fighting? Then they remembered something they should have from the start, something to deal with bandits… It probably wouldn't stop the Adversary. They knew this since they had the knowledge of how it was built. But the countermeasures were worth trying. 

…

_____The Adversary continued blasting along the rails, metal hooves squealing along the rails. The mechanical beast had the idea of tearing apart that train to find the Ritchie target. It did not have data on what this "Ritchie" looked like, but the Ritchie must have humans close to it--to identify it. It would then destroy the Ritchie.

_____Something emerged from the top of the rearmost train car, followed by a very loud _put-put-puttering _sound… Simultaneously, matching the rhythm of the sound, something began thumping the Adversary's frontal armor. It took half a second for the metal monster's electronic brain to identify the threat: twin-mounted fifty-caliber guns were firing in this direction. However, the rounds were not at all strong enough to penetrate its crystal carbon and polymer-reinforced exoskeletal shell. 

______Clank…_ _Cl-cl_-_cla-a-ank…!_ A small door on the rear car flopped open, dropping all sorts of plastic scrap onto the rails. Bent tools, jagged steel blocks, all kinds of solid metal debris came down. Some of it caught in the rail ties. It wouldn't be enough to stop the train on the return trip, but it was designed to stop smaller bandit vehicles.

______Small_ was not an adjective to describe the Adversary at all, but it was definitely smaller than the train. The debris was interfering with its balance on the rails. Between the dual chatter of the two mounted automatic guns and the debris cluttering up the track, the Adversary was rapidly losing its balance. 

_____That is, until its electronic brain recalculated inertial values and increased speed…. The guns overheated and stopped firing, and the scrap metal was all gone. Nothing was stopping the Adversary from its target now. 


	3. Chapter Three

__

All The Colors of Yesterday 

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 3

…

_____There were, of course, other places out in the toxic wastelands out beyond the cities and the farms--beyond places like the train had come from and was heading towards. These were places long forgotten and--longer since--not visited by outsiders. From the rusting remains of abandoned industrial complexes to the dilapidated buildings of dead farms, to even places rendered unidentifiable by the sand-carrying winds and toxic rains, these areas were generally left alone by the meddling of Zalem. Where there was no identifiable human activity, the powers-that-be in the mighty floating city did not care.

_____When life and control in Zalem went up in a bright, ultra-violent radioactive flash as hot as the inside of the sun, these forgotten places were made doubly secure from prying intrusion. Passive surveillance of the world had been shut down when Zalem's machines died. It made the wastelands even more forbidding, more unknown. 

_____Maybe some day, explorers from the cities would brave the vast flatness of the desert and search for those forgotten remains of long-gone years. Maybe, with laws against the development of flying machines gone, people would take flight and see these places. Or maybe, they would be too frightened to approach the places…because of eerie rumors: gossip and speculation. 

_____People were not generally religious, being too concerned with earning a living and drowning their problems with the awful drinks from bars and the loud action of cyborg gladiatorial battles. But people had time to talk. And when people talked, rumor mixed with imagination to make for the most amazing stories.

_____There were reasons why people stayed away from those places, too. Why were those places still standing--after all of these centuries? Earthquakes, warfare and pollution ought to have destroyed half of everything from the past, and the erosion of blowing desert sands should have destroyed the other half. Something, or _someone_, must be keeping those places standing…

____ Large, dark and strange figures were said to stagger among the ruins of abandoned cities, their arms bristling with distorted limbs. It wouldn't be surprising if some of the leftover fighting machines from the world-destroying wars were still stomping around out there--prepared to attack and obliterate anyone who dared invade their territory. The limbs could be unknown and terribly destructive weapons from long ago, ready to destroy strangers with a little bit of the insane fury used to destroy the land all of those centuries ago. 

_____Or they could be mutants: lost generations of humanity made into twisted, sadistic creatures from toxins that leaked up from the ground and rained down from the sky. There could be entire tribes of mutants out there… Everybody knows that the pollution from the factories makes for mutations in the city--some mutants gone insane and becoming murderous creatures killed by vengeful cyborgs. Imagine the results of them being left to thrive out there--left to reproduce and continue. 

_____Maybe it was best to stay away from the places of yesterday. Leave them alone, and keep going wherever you're going. If you don't, you could end up being blown to bits by one of those dying war-machine of long ago, its rusted weaponry still working. Or some of the mutants could catch you and make you into a meal. Cyborg or full-flesh human, they'd get you. If you were still human, they'd eat all of you, even the bones. If you were a cyborg, they'd probably find out how to open up your head to eat your brain--then use your body parts for shrines or makeshift weapons. 

_____So, stay away from the forgotten places, like that place of forgotten happiness. Stay away from that city of metal statues, gaudy framework structures and paved streets. The streets are now dusted with sands, and the paint on the structures had been scrubbed away by wind and toxin-bearing rain. The windows are cracked, showing the dark insides of the buildings. 

…

_____Stay away, because this place was still alive. Deep within this forgotten place, there was a control room at the end of a short hall. A _cl-click_ of the doorknob, and the door leading in silently opened on oiled hinges. Light little footsteps came into the room--followed by bigger slower ones. There were no windows as this room was underground. The walls were metal-reinforced concrete mixed with a sort of plastic--never to crack or buckle. A very light breeze gently through this place as the circulation systems were still at work, humming low. 

______Flick!_ Low-powered lights came on--simulating the color of sunlight. With the extra light, other details became apparent. There were six life-sized dolls neatly lined up along the left and right walls, dressed in maid uniforms, their jointed metal knees stiff and still while their hands were folded in front. Dolls? No, their eyes moved to track the two who entered this place. They were robots. 

______Fl-flick!_ One entire wall seemed to come to life: a control console. There were at least nine screens above the row of keyboards, knobs and buttons. Yet only six of them were active. They showed specific views of other places, far away. A large, plush seat was set in front of this setup.

_____Footsteps crossed the dark, solid floor. There was the sound of someone sitting down in the seat, followed by the sound of something being eaten. _Crunch-crunch-crunch…_ A space of silence followed after the food was swallowed. It was popcorn--a large bucket of yellow popcorn, eaten more out of luxury and amusement than actual nutritional need. Popcorn was supposed to be a fun-food--the sort of thing people ate while watching movies. 

______Crunch-crunch-crunch… _The smooth, pale hand took more from the bucket of popcorn and carried it to the pert mouth. _Munch-crunch-crunch… _Hmm, nothing much was happening on the city monitors. A tap of a button by a butter-stained little finger, and data appeared on one of the higher screens: numbers and readouts on economic activity, food consumption, fusion energy production and such. _Bo-o-oring! _

_____But_ "_boring" was also good in a way, because it meant that nothing stupid was happening right now. Things were easier that way, more predictable. _Flick! _Another tap of a button, and there was a roving view of an office in the city on one of the monitors. The visual feed was actually from the perspective of someone important in the city--a crime-lord. However, the crime lord wasn't aware that what he was seeing was being broadcast to a large antenna mounted on a tall building--the signal boosted from there--then relayed out to this place. 

_____From this control room, one could see--and understand--plenty. There were cameras in the most amazing places. Some of them poked up from Deckmen, now tossed into mountainous scrap-heaps. And there were more cameras right in the heads of cyborgs and robots. After all, cyborg eyes were essentially high-resolution video cameras. Some cameras were even put into place by security-conscious people. They did not even know how easy it was for an outsider to patch into the video feeds through old data networks.

_____Like the cameras in the train, for example… _Click!_ There was now a high-up and angled view of the lounge car in a certain nuclear-powered freight train. It showed one of the cyborg-girls looking at another monitor. The zoomed-in view on that monitor showed that something big, nasty and practically indestructible was following the train. 

_____The twins were worth attention because they had interfered with Barabbas' plans. Those big dummies…! Didn't they know _what_ they were messing with? Oh well, they were worth leaving alive for now--just because they made things a little more fun. The same was true for that great big nasty metal monster coming after them! _Crunch-munch-munch…_

_____Ooh, this is getting _good_--better than those old archived movies because this was real! _Crunch-crunch-munch…!_ The city could take care of itself for now, not worth monitoring. And if it didn't… Well, then it wasn't worth maintaining, was it? Maintenance? Ha-ha-ha…! That's for workers! _Control _is the name of the game here. And since her father was dead, she could play this "game" all she wanted! Better yet was how the participants in the game didn't even know they were playing! 

_____"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…! _Fun, fun, fun_!" squealed the girl's voice. It was all one big game, how the world worked. And if some of the toys broke, so what? There were always more: There were always plenty of other cyborgs to play with. _Plenty _of toys! And because daddy was dead; _he_ couldn't stop _her_ from having all the fun in the world! The little girl's carefree laughter echoed throughout the control room, while the mouthless metal robotic maids and large robotic teddy bear stared on--awaiting commands from their mistress. 

…

2.

…

_____One of the twins emerged from the train's incredibly noisy engine room, a worried look on her synthetic face and her long dark hair looking a little wild as she turned to look at the video monitor bolted to the lounge wall. A few button presses, and she saw that _it_ was still following them along the rails. She muttered a curse to herself before shouting, "_It's still following!_" 

__

_____The other twin shouted something obscene in return from the engine room, sounding garbledover the rattling racket before she yelled back something more sensible. "_Of course it is! I'll fire the guns until they're cooked! Keep watching to see if that slows it down!" _

_____While this was going on, Ritchie was still huddled on the train lounge's bed. He held his ears clamped to all the noise. His eyes were squeezed shut. This was all too much madness, too much insanity. Here he was, speeding through the vast desert wasteland, all messed up with toxic wastes, earthquakes, nuclear weapons and who-knew-what-else from centuries ago! And now something very big and very powerful was chasing them. 

_____It was a monster, right out of a nightmare. The monsters of nightmares are always big, always strong, and very fast. A person can run as fast as he can, try to hide, try to do whatever. But the monsters were always right there and always getting closer. Any second now, the thing would latch on to the rear of the rear train car with its one claw-hand before coating the rest of this vehicle in plasma fire. 

_____Ritchie wondered what it would feel like, being incinerated alive or being hacked to pieces with that gigantic three-tined claw. He had the idea that it would hurt and would continue to hurt until he was dead. It would feel awful, be awful. How long would he see his own blood and insides? 

_____The twins were shouting back and forth, one telling the other what was happening from her side. Why did they even care? Why were they even trying? Ritchie had the idea of trying to break open the windows and hopping outside. He then had an awful mental image of his arm or chest being caught on a shard of jagged glass as he leapt out, becoming a bloody mess when he fell the half-story to the ground--to the shredded by the quickly passing scenery. 

_____At least that way, he would be able to choose how he would die! He jumped up from the bed and began to pound at the tinted window! His palms felt weak, so he began to kick at it much as one would try to kick at a brick wall reinforced with steel. And like a brick wall reinforced with steel, the annealed glass of the lounge window wasn't giving away under his frantic blows. 

_____He panicked, still hit at the window with hands, feet, knees, elbows, anything! It was becoming a mad and blurry frenzy as he continued hitting and hitting... _Crack!_ Something finally broke, but it wasn't the window. Ritchie felt a stinging numbness come over his left hand, a strength-sucking pain that began to spread up his elbow and seemed to wash over his brain. It hurt too much. All the shouting and noise seemed to fade off into nothing as he collapsed onto the bed. 

_____The twins were still having their own problems. Her sister shouted another angry obscenity from the engine room. She couldn't even retract the remote guns back down into the train, which was how the train evaded the gun ban in the city. What would happen when they pulled up to the city's border, those guns out and smoking? She had the idea that things wouldn't really go well… 

_____All of this noise, all of this stupidity! There was no stopping the Adversary, and there was going to be trouble when they arrived in the city with those guns showing--if guns were still illegal even after Zalem's fall. Why did some jerk back at the farm have to send the Adversary after them? And why did that moron Barabbas have to screw things up? Why did she make the Adversary to begin with? Angry at everything, the frustrated cyborg-girl _slammed_ a solid fist down on a rust-coated metal console--inadvertently hitting two buttons. 

_____Her sister gave a yelp of fright--a yelp lost in the noise from the engine room--when she saw the security monitor suddenly flick itself off. Now there was no telling what was happening back there, behind the train. What, had the intense radiation from the Adversary's blasting arm-cannon short-circuited the camera? Yeah, that's what probably happened. She then felt a slight extra _thump_ of vibration beneath her feet as something happened at the back of the train.

…

_____ _Cl-click!_ The two rear-most cars detached from the rest of the train, trailing snapped wires that hadn't been properly disconnected. They began to slow itself down, slowing due to wind resistance. These cars was no longer part of the speed and the progress dashing through the desert and was getting slower still… _Slo-o-o-w-w-w-e-e-er…_

_____The Adversary's thick electronic mind was vaguely confused for a moment as it saw the rear cars coming closer. There was no accounting for it at first, as the Adversary was sure that it was not going any faster. It was already going the maximum rate of speed allowable without losing its balance on the two rails. How could the train be coming closer?

_____Soon enough, the detached train-cars were edging closer to the speeding metal beast. Seeing that its progress was impeded, it gave a mechanical growl as it raised its huge left claw-hand as the train-car came closer._ Shwoosh…_

_____Ka-clank-k-k! The Adversary's alloyed claw was embedded in the train's rear-wall. It then stopped firing its arm-cannon like a rocket and pulled itself up as so its silvery hooves were no longer skidding along the rails. Then it took aim with its still-hot arm-cannon--aiming towards the lower-portion of this car and let loose with a blast of burning blue-hot plasma-flame. Someone screamed when the detached train cars were blasted through with ultra-burning energy, and then there was a blast of heat and sound a little like the end of the world. 

…

_____"_Ha-ha-ha…!_" The smiling twin shakily stepped out of the engine room and closed the noise behind her, her long dark head of hair looking as wild and uncombed as her sister's. She slumped down on the lounge car's couch, laughed some more. Her sister looked at her and began laughing too…though she wasn't sure why and sat down too. "I climbed up to the cockpit and saw what happened. The rear cars detached, and the thing was caught in an explosion!"

_____"Hmmph! Why didn't I do that from the start?" asked Kyrie, realizing what her sister was laughing at. "Pretty silly of me, thinking that I could slow the thing down with those silly little things atop the caboose! Nothing could!"

_____"Think that's crazy? I thought about climbing up to the top of the train and running to the back and operating the guns myself! Would've… Ha-ha! Would've been a _blast!_" laughed Harrah. "My balance really sucks too! But then again, I am the smarter one and wouldn't have done that."

_____"Ha-ha… He-e-e-ey! Wait a second… _I'm_ the smarter one!" whined Kyrie. "Not only that, but I'm the prettier one, too!" She looked at her identical sister, trying her best to look serious for a moment. Both stared…before both again burst into laughter. Things were going to be okay after all.

…

3.

…

_____The huge claw sifted through the blasted, darkened remains of the rear cars, beginning with the rearmost one while its visual sensors analyzed the debris. Although the Adversary lacked solid data on the Ritchie target, there was an seventy-three percent probability that the Ritchie was _homo_ _sapiens--_a human being. The Ritchie was positively identified as being male as well. Therefore, the target profile was sharpened by a degree: a male human.

_____No, there were no human remains among the debris of the car analyzed first. Heavy plodding steps brought the Mercenary over to the next part of its investigation, the second ruined train car. It too had been obliterated--pieces and parts everywhere. _Parts_… The Adversary's main processor requested more data from the visual recognition systems. Currently, among the scattered chunks of metal, there were some severely damaged remains of bodies as well. There were arms and legs, along with the occasional spare torsos of cyborgs. Some were even without heads. On further analysis, the bodies were actually of metal. Also present were non-functioning Deckmen--their rubber faces charred and cylindrical can-bodies ripped open by debris. Still analyzing…

_____The results of data analysis indicated that the second car was either a storage container for spare cyborg parts or a place in which hidden passengers secluded themselves during transport. To distinguish the two probabilities, there needed to be some additional data. There was pertinent data stored in video and audio storage memory.

_____Then the Adversary's main processor loaded the data from stored memory. The visual resolution was lower, and the digital sound quality was reduced due to data compression, yet it was enough. It "replayed" the time the plasma from the arm-cannon blasted the inside of the train-cars--analyzed the visual and audio data of the event...

_____There it was--between the sixth and ninth frames frame of stored video memory: the sound of a scream, two deci-seconds before the plasma blast penetrated the train-cars. There was a loud and high-pitched human sound, the characteristics of one voice-print. But it was not that of a male human. The Ritchie did not generate a "scream," nor were there any human remains among the debris--merely metal components to destroyed cyborgs. 

_____Conclusion: Four to five humanoid cyborgs had been destroyed, along with three Deckmen. If the Ritchie was not here, then the Ritchie was somewhere else. And if the Ritchie was in the train and not destroyed, then the Ritchie was still in the train. Move to the next search location. 

_____Recalling previous tactical data from memory, the Adversary chose not to follow the same means of mobility. It turned in the direction of the long train-tracks, stretching off into the sun-baked desert distance, then began clomping in the last-identified direction of the train.

…

_____In the meanwhile, Duct was sitting down and looking at the remains of the vehicle repair lot. Well, the fenced-in lot itself wasn't damaged. But the home and workshop building that belonged to he and his brother had been blasted through by a massive explosion--the insides gutted by blast and heat. Duct just sat in front of the ruined building and asked himself, _What in tarnation happened here?_

_____"Look at that!" he blurted, glancing at his brother in a similar seat close by. "Just _look_ at that! Doggone it! We jus' go away for _one minute_… _One minute! _And then the whole dang-on place gets shot to _heck _by who-knows-what_. _Everything's done."

_____"Hee-hee-hee… Yeah! Or maybe we're lucky we weren't inside and eating cinnamon oatmeal when it happened!" giggled Duct's skinny brother. "Well, or maybe we aren't so lucky. Cinnamon oatmeal just tastes so _good!_ I mean, _goo-o-o-od…_ Mmm-m-m-m, hmm! Especially when what's-her-name makes the cinnamon flavor straight from the reconstituted powders. I know, I know… Real cinnamon plants are hard to raise. But the way she uses the fake stuff…"

_____"How the _heck_ can you think about _cinnamon oatmeal_ at a time like this?" blurted Duct. "Fer goodness sake. Our place was just blown up! Most everything we done worked on, everything we made, it's all messed up! We got almost nothin' left. Almost nothin' but some clothes, some storage boxes, and…" He paused, his eyes going unfocused as his big round face went calm with a sudden thought. "You know what?" he said, very calmly. "Let's go."

_____"Go? Hee-hee-hee…! You mean, _go?_" asked Scotch. "Makes me wonder what's gonna happen this time." He then stood up, crossed his skinny arms across his coveralls-covered skinny chest, then puffed himself up in his best imitation of his big brother's stance--tried his best imitation of his brother's gruff voice. "'_Harumph! We go away fer jus' one minute…!'"_

_____"Huh? Whaddaya mean?" grumped Duct, looking at Scotch. "You tryin' to tell me that they need us 'round here fer security or somethin'? That ain't all true, though! Think 'bout it fer jus' a few doggone seconds. If we ain't been here in the first place, maybe Barabbas wouldn't have come 'round here. Then none of this probably woudn't ever have happened. Or heck! If we ain't built up here in the first place, we wouldn't have lost anything." The big man in matching coveralls and work-shirt slowly got to his feet--still a little weak from heat exhaustion. Just a little. "We've still got enough stuff to store food, clothes, an' enough tools in the dune buggy. We bolt ourselves some extra storage-space on top, an' we can be on our way."

_____It turned out that there was a little more left over from the Adversary's destruction than Duct had guessed. Scrounging through the ruins of their former home, the two mechanics found all the tools they needed--along with some spare coveralls and work-shirts. It was a little tricky, but they managed to rig two metal storage-boxes to the top of the dune buggy's tube-framework and one more just above the big engine in back. 

_____They organized what they had packed. One of the storage boxes held repair tools and a few spare RTG repair units. The next box held a few sturdy sacks bags of money-chips they had saved up and never really spent. The third box had food: plenty of dried peanuts, some canned creamed corn, and just as much water. Plenty of water. 

_____It was getting around sunset by the time their quick preparations were done. They motored their dune-buggy out towards the train depot, then hit the accelerator and sped off. Navigation was going to be easy. All they had to do was follow the tracks. Allowing for one rest-stop tonight, going nearly full speed, and not counting possible engine failure (which was almost impossible), they would be in the city by around this time tomorrow. Duct switched on the headlights, illuminating the darkening sandy flats ahead. 

…

4.

…

_____Kyrie opened her eyes, squinting against the yellow-white morning sunlight that glared in through the train lounge windows--as seen from the floor. Her sister was also just waking up, her fingers stroking long dark strands away from her face. They had slept on a blanket, leaving Ritchie to sleep on the bed. The two cyborgs then went into the train's small bathroom to wash up--paying extra attention to their hair and faces. (There was, of course, as much hot water as they could ever want: The train's nuclear turbine generated plenty of it.) They wanted to look neat for their entrance into the train station in the city. 

_____"_Get up, sleepy!_" they said together, smiling. Ritchie squirmed in the bed, sprawled out, and did not want to wake up. A few pokes on the shoulders and continued coaxing, and he did get up. They didn't have any fresh clothes for him, but he was able to at least shower in the bathroom. Well, they could buy clothes for him in the city. 

_____Oh yes, the city! First it seemed like a jagged profile across the far-horizon, a bit hazy as the industrial smokestacks were getting fired up for another workday. The jagged line on the horizon became thicker and more detailed as the train sped closer still. Some signs indicated that freight trains should be below a certain speed at this point. _Oh, right!_ They went to the engine room and began slowing down the train. In all their haste and relief on finally getting close to their destination, they'd almost forgotten about driving this big thing.

_____While Harrah stayed at the main engine-room controls, Kyrie climbed the ladder up to the overhead, glassed-in train cockpit. There were simplified train controls up there, used to guide the train into rail-yards and stations. It also gave a much better view of where they were going. They were really getting there, almost there. Seeing the upcoming urban landscape brought up faded, long-away memories of interesting times about being there. Kyrie remembered, and she was sure that Harrah had the same memories.

_____This train slowed down, getting to the vast wide wall that acted as a city border against the hard grit and sands of the flat-out desert. They were going at a slow-cruising speed when they came through the opened gates, and the city seemed to grow all around them. These travelers were now in a landscape of concrete buildings, hard streets, and machines of metal. 

…

_____Everyone climbed the ladder down from the train's engine room and onto the raised concrete platform. The train depot looked almost exactly as the twins remembered: a cavernous indoor industrial place, busy with cranes and working cyborgs to unload loads--other trains being parked on rotating sections of track. There were some important differences Harrah and Kyrie noticed right away. Among the freight workers in gray work-clothes, there were some fleshies and cyborgs wearing black business suits and white shirts. The businesswomen wore skirts and stockings with their tailored jackets and shirts, seeming as severe as the businessmen. 

_____And there were no robotic representatives of Zalem in sight. The once-familiar sight of Netmen and Deckmen humming around on mobile setups or preaching from installed platforms was no more. The people in dark business clothes, then, must be part of the group that took over this city's administration: the organized crime syndicates that once operated on the fringes of the law. Now that Zalem was no longer the law…

_____"_You three…!_" came a shout from the left of the train platform, and the twins turned to look. Two people were striding hard in this direction: a dark-suited fleshie and a cyborg in coveralls. The full-flesh man glared at them, his pasty face getting red. "The manifest said _nothing_ about there being three drivers. And you're missing two whole cars of electromechanical parts. Who are you, and why'd you screw up my shipment?"

_____The twins glanced at each other while Ritchie stood stock-still. "Umm-m-m…" went one of the twins. "Well-l-l… It's like this. We were attacked out there and almost got killed. There was this huge war-machine chasing us on the tracks. We tried using bandit counter-measures on it…"

_____"But the big thing was way too strong for that," added the other. "It just kept getting closer and closer. We had to do something… Or it would've messed up the whole train! It had this _huge _gun-arm thing that fires blasts of focused plasma and a claw on the other arm that can smash anything. It was trying to kill us, mister! What could we do?"

_____"So that's your story, huh?" mused the man in the business suit. "You still didn't tell me who you are. For all I know, you're just a bunch of stowaway bandits who killed the driver and planned on selling the leftover goods in an unofficial market. My friend Jumbo doesn't know you, and he's supposed to know all the train people from that farm…" The man jerked a thumb at the cyborg in coveralls standing close by. "What _are_ your names, huh?" 

_____They introduced themselves. "My name's Harrah," said the twin on the left. "And my name's Kyrie," said the one on the right. "This is Ritchie… His father was killed during some trouble back on the farm, and we had to leave. It was either that or be killed. So we…" She stopped talking as the business man's smirk grew even bigger.

_____"Harrah…? Kyrie…? You have _got_ to be kidding me! And that lie about the war-machine sounds about just as phony!" declared the man in business suit. "I guess we'll have to show you farm-headed bumpkins how the Black Market deals with phonies." He just pointed to them, and then at least twenty large-bodied cyborgs seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere around the platform--grabbing the twins and the boy. 

…

_____They were half-dragged, half-carried out of the train station by the solid metal hands of big freight-worker cyborgs. Ritchie yelped at one point when a rough-looking cyborg pulled a little too hard, nearly pulling his arm out of the socket. The pain brought tears to his eyes. Kyrie and Harrah weren't experiencing physical pain, but the emotional shock they felt was numbing them to all of this.

______Dumbstruck _was the word_._ Both twins were numb with the suddenness of their situation, letting themselves be rough-handled and forced along as they were taken to wherever that crime boss wanted to go. Then again, _crime_ boss was the wrong term, since that group called the Black Market was in charge now. And they were going to prove it to these three newcomers. 

_____The place wasn't far, a rough-looking square structure next to the station. It was in the city proper, with short buildings all around and paved streets lined with sidewalks-and yet more buildings. They were hustled through a ground-floor area littered with cyborg body parts and unconscious people, some more business-suited gangsters standing around. The sign next to the elevator said "_Athoglog_." 

_____Up the elevator, they were taken to the roof--which was covered over with shiny sheets of metal. Why? Because the sheets of metal better reflected the heat of the coming sun--all the better to punish those who would be tied to the many crosses up here. There were already some cyborgs here, heads lolling in the heat and limbs tied to the braces with loops of steel cable. For the cyborgs whose limbs had been buzz-sawed off, bolts held the metal stumps to the metal crosses.

_____Both twins were put on the same upside-down crosse. "N-no… _No-o-o-o!_" They screamed and struggled at the last minute when they realized what was being done to them. But the work-cyborgs were stronger than their weak struggles, holding them to the structures while they looped steel cables around their legs, hips and arms--and even around their necks, leaving their dark hair to hang straight down. 

_____Then they again sank into that dazed, lost look of theirs as the reflected sunlight on the baking metal began to heat up. The temperature regulation systems of the twins' bodies did what they could to keep their brains alive within the safe limits. Still, this set them both off into a feverish feeling of dizziness and disorientation, the state of mind between…_sleep and consciousness…_

…

______As their minds floated in that sickening and feverish dizziness, they began to see things… A bus…rolling down a city street. Ro-o-olling… Rolling down...the street… The bus was on fire, all full of wide, roiling flames that constantly gushed from the broken windows and the slow-turning wheels. The wheels were on fire too… _

_____Both twins gasped when they saw what happened next. The bus slowed to a stop, its ever-melting rubber tires smearing streaks of darkness. Someone stepped out of the bus, an old blind man dressed in work-clothes and silk-white shirt, a cane in his right hand. The twins were sure he could see them, somehow, though he had no eyes. They were dark, gaping sockets seemed to see nothing, yet also everything… 

_____Something was wrong with this, wrong about everything. It was the kind of horror a person experienced during a nightmare--everything being wrong. Something was going wrong with this place, and the burning bus was somehow connected to it. The burning bus…! They had to get away from the burning bus!

_____Their scream came out as a low moan, as they were feeling so weak. And somewhere, far away, they heard someone say something about "down…" Get 'em down. They were being pulled away, and the hot nightmarish vision was obliterated when cold wetness splashed their faces.

…

_____And they were looking up at the sky. They were taken _down from the upside-down crosses by people in coveralls. Someone…_poured water on their heads--cooling their brains. The cyborgs in coveralls even gave them some of the water to drink. It had a somewhat metallic taste to it, but the twins both drank until their artificial stomachs felt full. 

_____"The boss found out that you guys weren't troublemakers after all," said the big cyborg in gray coveralls, the one called Jumbo. "Sorry about that, but he said we can't have people messing up the train shipments in from the farms. Those shipments in from the farms are really _important. _We're still finding out ways to make our hydroponics food-manufacturin' places up an' goin', but that's gonna take a while. So we still need all the stuff from the farms we can get… No hard feelings, okay? That's just how my boss does business…" Jumbo and his assistants helped the girls and Ritchie to their feet. "And hey… Welcome to the city." 

…

5.

… 

_____They were allowed out of this building and into the city--almost pushed out. The twins were still feeling hot, dizzy and sick. To them, the world looking as if it was tilting and swaying… There were reasons why people didn't stay on building rooftops for long, especially during the afternoon--health reasons. Not only was it ridiculously hot atop buildings due to the heat-reflecting surfaces, but the air itself was also very bad--very contaminated. Noon-time was when the manufacturing machines of the industrial buildings were going full-tilt: churning out manufactured products and plenty of noxious smoke. Some days, the air became so bad that it made the sky look like an airborne chemical soup of rotten colors.

_____How long were they up there? Staggering along this sidewalk, they didn't know and couldn't be sure--clinging to each other for balance while Ritchie was somewhere ahead…or behind. He was _somewhere_ close by, probably just as dizzy and sick as they were. The tone of the sunlight seemed a little darker and redder as afternoon grew into late-afternoon. But that could also be due to the air-pollution. They couldn't be sure of the time of day or even be sure of where they were even going now. 

_____Everything looked and felt dizzy and wrong, tilting and whirling, the sidewalk and the buildings all around while people occasionally walked on by--stepping past. Some glanced at them staggering along, but kept going. It was usually a good idea to mind one's own business around here. A common saying in the city was this: Stick your head in where it wasn't welcome, and it was likely to get cut off. 

_____Despite the sickening haze of nausea filling their heads, the twins also noticed the heavy noise of the vehicular traffic on the streets now, mainly large heavy trucks. Since they were still in the outer fringes of the city, close to the train station, the trucks must be carrying goods brought in from the farms and other cities--goods brought on the trains. Maybe some of the goods on some of the trucks came from the shipment on the train they had ridden here: the very shipment they damaged and had been punished for. 

_____Then something slow and very hot seemed to go by on the street, making them feel even worse… A vehicle with an extra-hot engine, maybe--hot enough to be felt on the sidewalk. That was it: That extra bit of heat was finally too much. 

_____"H-hold on…" said Harrah, gasping for air. "I can't…." Then she and her sister sat down--or fell down. They then crawled across the sidewalk and set their backs against a gritty gray wall, heads together. This felt like a bad hangover from even worse wine. It was another reminder to them of why they didn't visit the drinking place too often: Feeling like this was the usual result the next day.

_____Another person walked by and stood there, seen as a blur through the dizzy eyes of the twins. Their head were clearing up a little, but not enough to see clearly. Looking up to see who it was took an effort. Squinting against the bright slanting sunlight, they eventually recognized who he was. Ritchie! He had had caught up with them. They struggled to stand up, using the building wall and each other to get to their feet. Kyrie reached out and…

_____"_A-a-a-agh!_" screamed Ritchie when the metal hand came a little close. He shook his head and stumbled backwards, tripping over his own two feet. The front of his shirt was wet with vomit, and his eyes looked red and wild--lost in confusion and madness. Then he turned and made a run for it! 

_____Before the twins could stop him, he was getting too far away, swaying and staggering as he moved. "_Wait!_" they shouted. To keep their balance, they kept their heads angled downward. This way, they were able to keep from falling over as they moved at a slow jogging pace--still a little woozy, but still able to move. "_Ritchie! Don't run away!" _they shouted in unison.

_____But Ritchie wasn't hearing that! He must have thought the girls were strangers coming for him or something. Or the thick nasty mix of various pollutants must have affected his thinking. He had lived on the farm all of his life and had never before breathed city air. Then there was the noise and shock coming into the city itself: all the noise and activity. It was the shock and _different-ness _of it all, especially when the city was in its most busy time of day.

_____As he stagger-ran on along the sidewalk, his head was full of insane chaos. The rumbling trucks were filling the street to the right of this sidewalk while the tall buildings stretched up to the left and right and all around, with the air above being nasty to breath and even look at… No telling what was going to get him in all of this noise and confusion, the toxic wind blowing and carrying city air, filling his ears and mouth with machine-engine noise and chemical-stink. All he could do was keep running and hope he didn't fall down again and get attacked by the crazies who live around here, especially the ones chasing him… Monsters and machines, big nasty metal things and little metal things that sounded like girls, everything was after him! He nearly fell when his left foot hit something, his right foot missing a step and making him suddenly go bumbling and stumbling in a random direction--the wrong direction. 

_____Able to see a little more clearly now, the twins suddenly stopped when they saw what was happening. They saw him stumble and veer towards the right: Yes, _right_ into the street. Of course, with all of those trucks moving and going, there was no time or room for any of them to stop. So they didn't. Ritchie must have been killed immediately when that dark-colored truck _smacked_ him down and kept going. And if he wasn't, then the rest of the traffic that followed must have surely done the job. 

______Please, no_… _Please… Please..! _The twins went to their knees, eyes wide and staring at the place in the street where they saw Ritchie last standing--a place filled with trucks moving too fast and too heavy. It couldn't be true. Ritchie just couldn't have been killed already. But the thick red smears on some trucks' front bumpers and tires was all the evidence they needed to see, wanted to see…

_____A shocking thrill of sickness suddenly filled their abdomens, making them get to their feet again and run for the nearest alley. The scene was too disgusting for them to even see, to even think about! Leaning on the alley wall, heads down, they gasped and wretched while their previous meal was coming close to coming up and out of their mouths. Electromechanical insides don't become "sick" in the way of organic ones, but severe emotional shocks from the brain and into the body could make for strong physical reactions.

_____ A gust of wind seemed to carry away the racket of the traffic, and then this alley seemed a little more quiet. Harrah and Kyrie stopped retching, began to stroke wayward strands of hair out of their eyes and straighten up. Indeed, everything was suddenly more quiet, more calm--a change in the air. 

_____"Terrible things happen to innocent people sometimes," said someone, followed by the _fwip _of a playing card being laid down on a makeshift table: actually a few wooden planks laid across a chunk of metal machinery. Another chunk of metal served as his seat. The old stranger was wearing blue coveralls over a dull red short-sleeved shirt, his beard getting to be as gray as the hair atop his balding head. _Fwip _went another playing card_…_ "Things happen. What can be done?"

_____"Who the Hell are you?" shouted Kyrie. She huffed, then began to rant. "What do you know about anything, huh? You know, there are some people who _deserve_ to die, bad people! People who rob and steal, people who hurt others! There are people out there who don't even deserve to…be…alive…! But some people…" She felt tears coming to her eyes, bit them back.

_____ "I can see how you view things," said the man sitting on the twisted chunk of old metal as he shuffled his deck of cards. _Fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip… "_For you, maybe, everything visible seems to be what matters. You work to buy food, to survive. And you take care of the people that you care about." _Fwip-fwip-fwip…_ Then he stopped shuffling his cards, took some cards away from the table. "But is that the _only_ way to see things? It's just that this blurry, flimsy thing you call _real life_ may actually be more than what we want to see. You don't know all there is to know, and maybe you can't understand." 

_____"What do you mean by that?" asked Harrah as the old man laid cards down on the beat-up old wooden table, his eyes still generally in their direction. "What, are you some kind of drugged-up mystic or something? You know, you should stay away from some stuff," she said, angry. "It'll mess up your head forever. Some of the stuff they sell could even make you deaf or blind…before making you dead."

_____"Hmm… What you have said is more _interesting_ than you know," responded the old man, his eyes seeming to look past them. In fact, during this entire conversation, he never once met their dual stares. _Fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip…_ He set down one more card next to the others he'd already set, them smiled as if enjoying the thought of a nasty joke. "_Five cards on the table, plus one more…_" he muttered, somehow audible in this unusually quiet alleyway. 

_____With Harrah and Kyrie staring and angry at that rude and strange old man, he gathered the cards down on the table without looking at them. All of the cards in hand, he put them in his pocket. Without saying _goodbye_ or anything, he then walked away. He opened up a metal door on the right side of this alley and went in--closed the door behind him. Wind blew across the entrance to the alley, making it seem to howl as it blew between the buildings.

_____With that gust of wind, the noises of the city returned. Another few trucks rumbled by, and everything felt normal again. So here they were, left shocked, miserable, and _angry_. Ritchie didn't have to die, hit by a truck. But who could they blame? The driver couldn't stop, and Ritchie couldn't stop. They couldn't blame the gangster who ran the train station and had them punished: They _did _ruin some of the shipment. Could they blame themselves, then? Maybe…

_____There was nothing they could do. Feeling low and miserable, the lingering sickness still in them, the female cyborgs sat down. They had to figure things out now; they had to think. Things were different now with Ritchie gone. But they had to keep going somehow… That was important.


	4. Chapter Four

All The Colors of Yesterday

by Elliot Bowers

…

Chapter 4

…

_____It was nearing the end of the afternoon in the city, and the dying sunlight was taking on that deeper tone of orange-red... Quttin' time! Time to get out of work for today! Most all of the workers were walking away from the factories and buildings where they had worked all day--filling the sidewalks, some of them going to outdoor cafes and pubs. People were everywhere outside, people of the cyborg and fleshie persuasion. Not everyone was heading straight back for whatever places they called home, be that place a lucky apartment in the downtown area or a converted square space in an unused sewer facility. Some were dropping by places to relax and hang out. 

_____Things were easy now in the city. Since there was so much cheap labor, a lot of work was done. In fact, maybe too much work was done, said the smart accountant-type people of the Black Market. They had to limit how much work the workers did and how much money people made. Why? It was all in the complicated formulas and words they used. 

_____The fancy explanation went something like this. The accountant people calculated the lack of demand from Zalem and factored in the only slightly increased demand from those on the ground, cross referenced with an already high supply of goods and services… An excess of supply and a lack of economic demand: That was a surplus. If too much work was done, too much was made, and not enough goods were being bought, the accountant-types said that something called "deflation" would happen in the economy: a "devaluing" of credit chips… Well, whatever. So on and so forth. 

_____Essentially, most all workers worked morning to late afternoon, and that was it. The only people who "worked" beyond that were the executives of the Black Market itself….like the businessman sitting at this café-table. The square glass of rice-wine sat atop this table as his metal hands clasped a thick paperback book--a collection of short stories. His dark business slacks and jacket still retained its neatly pressed appearance, the white shirt and collar still looking spotless. It was easier to stay neat, being a cyborg. Cyborgs don't sweat. However, the solid joints and segments of a metal body can ruin most types of clothes. 

_____ Officially, he was taking a break from going over the accounting records kept by the gambling bookies from the gladiatorial arena. That meant sipping his favorite wine at his favorite café and reading short stories. But unofficially, he was always on call for anything else that needed his attention.

_____He noticed someone standing opposite his place at this table, making him look up. "Excuse me… Mr. Muyamoto?" said the male cyborg, one in an orange business suit and with candy-colored hair atop his head. "There are two guys who want jobs working at an arena, fixing gladiators. They said they were good with machines…"

_____This made him lean back in his seat and cross his arms. Hmmph… Anyone looking for that kind of job at an arena was very brave or slightly suicidal--maybe both. Unscrupulous gamblers would sometimes have certain mechanics killed--just to be sure that rival gamblers lost money when the bodies of their favorite cyborg gladiators weren't repaired on time. 

_____Oh, but that wasn't how things were officially explained. No, it was said that mechanics had…accidents. _Deadly_ accidents. But whenever a mechanic had an _accident_, people just shook their heads and thought of the truth--not saying anything lest they also have an _accident_, like "falling" into the gears of a metals reprocessing plant or "falling" into the pipes of the water system. 

_____Mr. Muyamoto deftly slipped an expensive silk bookmarker into the paperback. The silk was actually a sophisticated synthesized polymer, but it was as pricey as the real thing would have been. The book went into a pocket, and a little more of the rice wine went down into his stomach. "Very well," he said, standing up. "I would like to meet these brave candidates for the requested job position." 

_____Giving a quick bow of his head, the candy-color haired businessman turned and began to lead the way between café tables and over to where two rough-looking men were sitting--seated at a table near the wall. The contrasts and similarities between the two was amazing: Both had the same facial features and had similar hair-types, both wearing coveralls and work-shirts. They were enjoying bowls of a thick, spicy stew… Gumbo, it was called. One of the workmen was especially skinny, while the other was especially portly and round. One face was thin and especially animated, the other face was round and more easygoing. 

_____They stopped eating, looked up and saw Mr. Muyamoto--who sat down in the chair opposite them. The orange-haired businessman stood close by and did the introductions. "Mr. Muyamoto, meet Scotch and Duct. They told me they were good at fixing machines. Maybe they can help out?" 

_____Mr. Muyamoto placed both solid gray hands atop the table. "Good afternoon. I have been told that you two seek positions of certain employment. I take it you are aware of certain, ah…_concerns _surrounding your career prospects."

_____"Heh-_heh!_ What kind of concerns would those be, mister?" went Scotch. "We're so good with hard machines that nothing concerns us! My brother and I, we've been working on stuff for years. We make stuff work that isn't supposed to, especially vehicles! Yeah, vehicles. But anything else, we can fix too. Fix motorcycles, fix cyborgs…" 

_____Duct gave Mr. Muyamoto a puzzling look before saying, "Mister, what my brother is _tryin'_ to say is that we got a lotta confidence and experience in what we do," said Duct. "We got our first work in the wastelands, fixin' whatever we found so we could use it to get by. Makin' a livin' out in the desert ain't been good. So we done moved to a farm. Stayed there for a while 'til somebody came by and said the world changed. Yeah, things were getting' slow. We wanted to get to where the action was, out in the world where things were happenin'. So we packed up some stuff an' drove here. Here we are, lookin' for work."

_____ Looking at them for a while, Mr. Muyamoto thought them over. He strongly suspected that the part about "work in the wastelands" meant that the two had been part of a band of desert bandits. Such was not negative or especially dishonorable: The Black Market association itself was illegal during the time that Zalem's laws ruled the cities. But now that Zalem was out of the game… "And you say, you drove from a farm. Please, tell me of this means of transportation you have used." 

_____"Hee-hee, yeah!" blurted Scotch. "We made our ride ourselves, made from parts. The framework's a one-piece setup with joints joined by memory metal. We got a HI-HO electric motor with dual power supply for lots of torque: microfusion and converted RTGs to give it juice! Hee-hee-hee…! Maybe the only hardest part was rimming the wheels! _Man!_ It took us _days_ to vulcanize the rubber knobbies on the back ones and get the front ones just right--mixing all the rubber with a smelly polymer so the tires wouldn't wear away for a hundred years. Then we had to…" His brother gave him a quick glare. "_Wha-a-at? _I was just telling him about our _dune buggy!_"

_____Mr. Muyamoto stared down at the table-top. These two were so confident in their own machinery skills that they had ridden their own hand-made creation through the desert. The _desert!_ Most vehicles on the city roads today were rebuilt and refurbished machines. Some of that technology was forgotten, so the factories relied on the old machines to keep turning out certain mechanical components. These two must possess technological knowledge that was once forgotten: even daring to use micro-fusion batteries! 

_____It would be a shame to lose these two talented mechanics in the sometimes-unscrupulous world of the gladiatorial arena business. It would be more of a shame to turn these two away to wander the streets and find a job elsewhere--perhaps to be killed by a lowly thief or unregistered organ broker… Or they could be taken away by some of Mr. Muyamoto's less-honest colleagues who ran the manufacturing facilities… Mechanics were being abducted, brought into factories, and never seen again. 

_____But if _he_ gave them a job, then his colleagues wouldn't take them. Better for them to work for him than end up in a deep dank factory machine-repair "job." He again looked at these two brothers in coveralls, two who braved the desert life and yet found time to be humble by working on a farm. 

_____"Gentlemen, you should be aware that the profession of gladiator cyborg mechanic is precarious and important. I will say it to you directly: You may sometimes be the target of less-than-honorable intentions, and some people may want you out of the way. But your work will be steady and of decent pay. That said, the jobs are yours should you wish it. As you do wish it, I can have my associate here, Mr. Coleco, take you to your place of work immediately. And before I forget, allow me to say this: Welcome to the city."

…

2.

…

_____Their once-wet tears of sadness had long since stopped flowing down their cheeks, and they were not sobbing anymore. Sitting side by side at the edge of the alley, Harrah and Kyrie stared at the alley's opposite wall--dim in the late-afternoon shadow of the buildings. People were passing by along the sidewalk, and trucks still drove along the street. It was also getting windy. 

_____Still staring at the wall… The concrete at the bottom of it was flaking away, revealing the rough gray cinder-blocks beneath. And the mortar between the rectangular blocks was slightly discolored with an odd blue-green rock-mold that survived the toxins in the air and the rain. There was no telling how deep the mold went into the wall's mortar-work, though. Maybe the building's wall was already cracking. Between the mold and the daily rumbling of heavy trucks along the road, the building's walls could suffer a collapse. 

_____Life was a bit like that wall. Little by little, things were getting a little bit worse at a time--eaten away bit by bit, making for little cracks in the solidity of things. It wouldn't be long before the cracks showed and things became worse. Then it would all…come…down…

_____They couldn't go back to the farm--or maybe any other farm. People like Barabbas had probably already made all the farmers a little crazy. And becoming wasteland bandits wasn't an option. Harrah and Kyrie weren't very good at fighting, didn't like to fight. Besides, they didn't like to hurt people. This city was their last hope, at least so far. There was nowhere else for them to go. 

_____Tilting her head towards her sister, Kyrie asked, "What are we going to do now? I mean, we came all this way… There's gotta be something we can do around here. You think the Black Market gangsters maintain the water-works? We could get a job there."

_____Harrah shrugged solid shoulders. "Not sure about that one, sis. I think…" A hard breeze suddenly howled through this alley, filling their ears and drowning out all other sounds. It was too loud to say anything. When it finally slowed and calmed down, she continued talking. "Ha-ha…! I was thinking that we could become singers or waitresses! If we had our satchel, we could use our chips to pay for throat modifications… You know, change our voice synthesizers to make for some really good harmonics. And we could do the waitress thing to tide us over between gigs."

______Thump! _Something thick and heavy landed in front of them, surprising them. After a second of shock, they realized that it was just what they thought they'd lost back at the train-station: their satchel! They looked up and to the right to see who was standing at the entrance to the alley. 

_____It was a familiar-looking big cyborg, one in train-yard coveralls. They remembered him; he was the one the station boss called _Jumbo_. "Hiya girls… I, uh…was listening to what you were talking about. I didn't wanna pry or anything like that, so... Yeah, my boss held onto your stuff and told me to deliver it to you…wherever you'd gone off to. He's not a bad guy or anything like that. It's just that he gets really pissed whenever something gets screwed up at the station."

_____Moving slowly, the twins sat up and leaned forward to open up the top of their bag. They didn't sift through it now. Everything was either all there, or it was not. But just the sight of the things they had packed from home was enough to restore their willpower. Maybe things could get better after all. They could buy some food, find a warm place to sleep, then wash up in a bathroom and start looking for a job. 

_____Jumbo put his metal hands in his coverall pockets. As his hands were so big, his pockets had to be even bigger. "Listen… I've been thinking about you two and was a little worried myself. I had a few kids once. All four of them were girls… Four daughters in a row. Would you believe it? You two both remind me of my youngest one." His eyes took on a far-off look--as if he was looking back into the memories. "But they're all gone now. They all went somewhere. It's just that sometimes I see a face in the crowd, a fleshie or cyborg girl who has that kind of pretty face and that long dark hair--pretty as a doll.

_____"Not many girls like to wear their hair long, you know," he continued. "I asked some ladies I know about that. They said long hair gets in the way and had to be brushed and washed more often than shorter styles. But my daughters did, wearing their hair long, just pinning or tying it up whenever they had things to do around that little two-room apartment we used to live in… Hmmph, they were just like their mother, always trying to make things a little more pretty for everybody. 

_____"Then my wife got sick, kidney problems or something. She had to become a cyborg, and then she left--saying she couldn't love a fleshie. Soon after, the girls left too. I went cyborg a few years after that because work was getting too tough on my old human body." 

_____The twins weren't sure of what to do now. They were feeling a little embarrassed for Jumbo, this stranger who was telling them such personal memories to them. But he had been kind and caring enough to personally bring them their bag. And they also had the impression that his explanation about his boss was a cover. The least they could do was politely listen.

_____It brought to mind some aspects of their life on the farm. Sure, they were friendly with most of the farmers. But they weren't _close_ to anyone. The twins spent more time fixing machinery all day and reading at night, their hand-made cassette player playing drinking-place songs. They never really had anyone there to talk to, to listen to their problems. Yeah… Maybe they should start here. 

_____He looked down at the cracked, grimy alleyway pavement. "Sorry about talking too much. I think that I've been working too hard, or been drinking too much of that beer. The beer, the ale, the wine, all that's better these days since Zalem's not taking the good stuff anymore, let me tell you! Speaking of beer… How good are you girls at fixing small engines?"

_____They both went wide-eyed. "Are you kidding?" went one of the twins. "Oh my gosh…! It's probably the only thing we're good at! We used to work on a farm for a really long time, years. If we had a job fixing stuff, we could do that _all day._"

_____"Yeah!" chimed in the other twin. "We can even make stuff." She reached for the satchel and beneath the layer of paperback books--getting out their cassette player. "See this? We made this ourselves. We even made the cassettes with a little multi-purpose press and some nanobot stuff we scraped up. If you want any machine job done, we can do it." 

_____"Really?" asked Jumbo, sounding genuinely interested. "I've got an uncle who runs a few pubs close to the downtown area. Most all the good mechanics are busy at the factories, fixing them up and keeping them running. Uncle Patrick can't always find people good at fixing things… You interested? Come on, I'll give you a ride there." 

…

3.

…

_____The big truck's cab section was large enough as so two could sit in the back, and there was a payload in back to allow for the carrying of heavy loads. Everything about Jumbo seemed big, so it was less of a surprise when it turned out that his truck was big: large enough to run over smaller vehicles and keep going. On the ride to Jumbo's uncle, the girls had time to look around at the city. They thought about dressing up a little for this job interview, but Jumbo said they weren't going in for an especially fancy job. Besides, they looked fine. 

_____Hmm… The city really wasn't as busy as they remembered it to be. People were idly sitting on chairs and in outdoor cafes, some more walking along the sidewalk. Everything was in the reddish glow of sunset, with some of the halogen streetlights already on. Well, since the city was working for itself now… 

_____This truck pulled into a gritty back area for parking. "We're here! He'll probably be glad to see you," he said. "You can leave your stuff in my truck if you want. Up to you… Hmmph, wonder why nobody's parked back here? Slow afternoon, maybe…" He opened up the side-door and the smaller rear one, climbed down. The twins hopped down, and Jumbo locked his big truck doors with something resembling a thick metal pen. 

_____Out front, the restaurant had a brown-painted sign above the door: a stylized picture of a beer mug, along with the word _Pub_ below it. The concrete front had a very neat appearance to it, with large windows showing customers inside at tables. Jumbo opened the door, and the girls went in--one of them carrying their satchel. 

…

_____While the outside streets were hard and concrete, the inside of this place looked warm and comfortable. The tables had incandescent lighting instead of the harder florescent lights common to most buildings, with padded seats. The drinking bar itself had raised stools where more customers were sitting and drinking, with a dark-haired and professionally dressed female bartender cleaning drinking mugs and looking around. From over there, she looked up to see who had come in, nodded and smiled to acknowledge Jumbo's presence. 

_____He waved and walked over to the bar, with his two guests following. "Hi, Carlene… Is my uncle around?" he asked. "I've got two talented workers here. They've been working on a farm for a while and want to get started here in the city."

_____"Is that so…?" went Carlene as she appraised them. Up close, the twins could see that the bartender herself was a cyborg--and admirably pretty. Dark pants, dark vest, and white blouse covered over most of her slim feminine body to the neck; the only sign of her not being a fleshie were her exposed metal hands. Her smooth face featured large green eyes that sparkled like deep jewels, her dark hair cut short. "You can find him in the basement…trying to deal with low water pressure. The water's holding up so far, but there only the one pump left. Some Black Market executives took our last mechanic… They wrestled him into the back of a blue limousine, and I haven't seen him since!" She looked left at the dark-suited customers sitting close by at this bar. "No offense, guys. It's just how you do business, right?" They shrugged.

_____"The basement? Okay, gotcha," responded Jumbo, who looked down at Kyrie and Harrah. "This way," he said, nodding sideward towards a door right of the bar marked _Staff. _They followed as he began ambling towards it, saying things like _Excuse me_ and _Pardon_ to customers he'd accidentally brushed with the girls following close behind. Jumbo was so…jumbo a cyborg that wide that he couldn't help but accidentally brush against backs and elbows in getting through. 

_____Standing somewhat sideways, the cyborg walked through the staff entrance to a kitchen, then opened another side-door--leading to the basement. Downstairs… The twins glanced at each other. Was this guy leading them to something besides a job? For all they knew, he could be a parts thief--gas them, cut out their brains, then sell their metal bodies.

_____But they'd already come this far. So they went down the sturdy metal stairs, going into the restaurant's basement. Down here, along with an arrangement of kegs, crates and wine bottles in the center, there were engine-sized machines along one wall for handling the building's electricity distribution, water and even climate control. 

_____A strong-bodied, well-dressed cyborg was sitting on a chair next to a tall cylindrical water-tank. His sleeves were rolled up, and his back was to them. Left of his feet, there was an open toolbox. He glanced back once, then stopped tinkering and got up to greet them. "Evening to you, nephew! You can see here that the water pump's gone again…" Then his eyes went to the twins. "Well! I knew you'd find a nice pretty young lady to settle down with one of these days, but… Ha-ha-ha! _Two_ of 'em. Did that crazy girl Lissette finally find some of that pheromone love-potion stuff for cyborgs or what?"

_____"No… Please, Uncle Patrick. It's not like that," almost whined Jumbo, a pained expression on his face. "You said you needed a new mechanic after they took Jake, right? So I found some for you. Meet Kyrie and Harrah. They're from a farm."

_____"Hmmph!" went Patrick, crossing thick metal forearms. "New in town, eh? Good! That means that the pokey folks from the Black Market won't be looking for you to work on fixing and maintaining those oversized factories. They're already taking a cut of my business income. Heh, at least big old Zalem didn't take my money! Anyway, let's see how good you two are." He crouched down and patted the head-sized casing attached to the water tank. "Get this thing going, and you've got yourselves a job. On top of that, I'll even let you have the mechanic's old room to stay in… You'll have to clean out Jake's stuff, though."

_____"Aw, geez… They took him that fast?" asked Jumbo. His uncle nodded and smirked. Yes, the Black Market gangsters took their last mechanic _that_ fast. No wonder why Uncle Patrick needed machine-people on such short notice, the two potential hirees already using the tools from the toolkit to disassemble the motor casing.

_____They had shut off the water pressure, disconnected the wiring, and had disengaged the soccer ball-sized electric motor itself. They took it apart in seconds. At one point, one of the twins went into their satchel and took out another toolkit. Grimy parts--big and small--were cleaned and oiled, and others were re-wired. 

_____Also impressive was how efficiently they worked. It was like watching one person in two bodies--sharing the same mind. One would hold a part and another would oil it. Then they would look at both sides of coils, contacts and such--both looking at sides the other couldn't see. And when they re-assembled the electric motor and its casing, there were four hands working together instead of just two separate pairs. One flicked on the circuit breaker while the other listened… They smiled when it worked. "_A simple alternating-current motor, one-half horsepower. No problem!" _they said in unison. 

_____Amazed, Jumbo looked to his uncle--who had a smile on his face. "Wow…" went Patrick. "Today must be my lucky day! I want you two to get to work for me _straight away_! I'll pay you weekly and, like I said, give you the basement side-room. My own mechanics… Just try to stay away from dark limousines, okey-dokey? I don't want to lose any more hired help to their plans." 

…

4.

…

_____By the time they had moved all of Jake's things and made the basement side-room more livable, it was really getting to be time for the twins to sleep. They had a sheet-covered mattress on the floor, a dresser-drawer, and a table--with a florescent work-lamp screwed to the wall and shining down. Another brighter florescent light was installed in the ceiling. But that one tended to give off a harsher, sharper light than was less comfortable when it was on full brightness. A rheostat-dial made the light adjustable. Attached to this room was a smaller bathroom-washroom that was lined floor to ceiling with hard ferro-cermic tiles, with a florescent light-tube above the sink and a mirror. There was a shower stall for bathing. 

_____For ventilation, there was an air vent that pulled in somewhat filtered air from the outside--the air filter being a low-voltage static-charged grid to pull out most airborne particulates. It was easy to reach in, get out the air filter to clean off, then reinstall. The air coming in was instantly a lot fresher-smelling. That done, they washed their metal bodies of grit buildup and dried off with towels from their satchel. Their cassette recorder went atop the table, along with a few choice books. 

_____Jumbo's Uncle Patrick came downstairs to look at their handiwork. He leaned sideways on the open door-jamb and looked around the small room. "Hmm… It looks a wee bit harsh and simple. Being as you two are young ladies, I'd thought you would've prettied up the place with pictures and things like that! But, that would be my peculiar opinion..." His voice then became more businesslike. "Ahem! Come tomorrow mid-morning, I'll expect you two to be ready for work. I'll take you to my third establishment, which I know for certain has a rattley old water pump that needs the kind of miracle work you two can provide. From there, I want you to inspect the wiring and see if something can be done about the air ventilation system. You'll be on duty for just one hour under regular city hours…done in the afternoon, an hour before noon. In addition to free food and room, I'll pay you a decent weekly wage in credits, say…" He then named an impressive sum. 

_____Still sitting at the table, the twins looked at each other. That was easily _nine_ times the money they made back on the farm, and they worked sun-up to sun-down: all day! But not here in the city… "Mr. Patrick, " carefully began one of the twins. "Are you sure you want to pay us that much? It won't hurt your business or anything…" 

_____"Bah!" responded the well-dressed male cyborg. "It would could me a great deal more not to have a better-working electrical system! It's around what I paid Jake before _they_ took 'em away…." He paused. "Oh-h-h… I see! It's that dirt wage they paid you, right? Young ladies, you're in the city now. Things are different around here…" Someone called his name from the basement stairs. "I must be going. Good night, ladies. I'll see you in the morning." 

_____"Good night," they said as he walked out, gently closing the door behind himself. They then turned down the ceiling light until it was almost not visible. Turning off the light completely would have set this windowless basement-room in sharp darkness. 

_____But otherwise, this place was so convenient and complete that they suspected that, once upon a time, this basement area must have been a complete living area in itself--or a kind of war shelter. There was actually a part of the floor that had been cemented over--perhaps covering an extra door downward. And part of the wall in the main area of this basement looked as if the bricks were newer.

_____Who once lived here? And when had they been here? It was something to wonder… Clothes still unpacked, the twins laid down on the mattress, a thin blanket over them, they could hear the faint bustle of the pub's night-life activity. The muffled sound of talking and footsteps through the thick and insulated floor began to sound far away… They thought vaguely about having some kind of food--a few cookies or something sugary for a kind of late dinner--but their brains were even too tired for that. The twins dreamed…

…

______That concrete had been removed from a section of the floor, revealing a solid metal door. The metal door in the floor, it opened up into a darkness beneath this basement room. It was hard to tell if there were actually stairs or some way of getting down there. There was just a feeling of going down. _

_____Somewhere, they hit the floor. Going along, going through darkness, there was a candle-lit table down here--but it was far from being a gentle-lit romantic scene. The six candles, along the edge of the table, were blood red. And, oddly enough, the flames were also red. 

______A random breeze caused the candles to flicker, and the bearded old stranger in coveralls sat down at the table. They remember seeing him in the alley when they first arrived in the city. Here he was again, this time…in a dream._

_____Or a nightmare. He had with him a deck of thick, green-colored cards--differently colored from the ones he originally had.. Fwip-fwip-fwip… _He shuffled the cards with old but fast fingers--rather, extremely experienced fingers. Those quick and magic fingers of his moved in a deft and rapid-fire dance that must have rearranged the cards about six hundred times. _

_____Then his fingers stopped. Smiling a sad smile, he spoke. "I knew the words, but I sang them wrong…" he moaned. "It's an o-o-o-old, sa-a-a-ad song… An old song, but I knew them wrong. I sang them wrong!" He shook the green deck of cards, then set them atop the table. "Now my love is gone…without me…" Then he set one card down. It wasn't really a card made of paper; it was a card of printed computer circuitry. "Oh, how I sang them wrong…!"

…

_____The twins woke up the next morning and folded up the sheets they'd used. Bringing a small purse with some credit chips, they went upstairs and found that some of Patrick's working staff was already readying the restaurant for the day. The sunlight was just breaking over the horizon, a golden brightness that lit the tops of the buildings and signaled a new day. An hour from now, the sidewalks would be busy with the morning work-crowd, and vehicular traffic would fill the streets. There were even some trucks on the road right now--bringing in goods from the train depot.

_____Patrick walked in from the kitchen entrance. He saw the dark-haired twins standing aside and watching people work. "Hmmph! You two are early risers. Have you had breakfast yet?" They shook their heads. "No problem! Let's have ourselves a seat at a table over here… _Joe, get us some juice!_ Heh-heh-heh…" 

_____"Sure thing, boss!" said one of the workers preparing this restaurant. While Patrick and the twin cyborgs sat down, Joe came over to the table with a platter: three glisteningly clean wine glasses and a tall glass pitcher of sweet-smelling reddish juice. Joe set a glass in front of each person at this table, poured the juice. "Here you go, 'Get-Up-and-Go' juice!"

_____"Yeah, my own creation," declared Patrick. "It's got everything a cyborg needs for a busy day: plenty of glucose, a high concentration of high-fructose corn syrup, citric acid and freshly synthesized artificial flavoring--supplemented with trace elements to keep the brain up and going!"

_____Kyrie and Harrah had drunken plenty of odd liquids in their day, so it didn't especially bother them to try something they'd never tasted before. It really was tasty and refreshed them. And, yes, it really made them want to get things done. "_Wo-o-ow!_" exclaimed one of the twins. "Yeah, this is good stuff!" added the other. 

_____After talking at the table and being driven over to another one of Patrick's restaurants, the twins' work-day passed in a hurry. They were so intent on inspecting and sprucing up the electrical system that they didn't notice time passing. One minute, it was morning. Then it was already time for them to quit--while they were busy testing the heavy circuit breakers they had refurbished and reinstalled. The twins wanted to work a little more, but Patrick said that they had already done enough work for the day; save some for tomorrow! Besides, there were regulations in the city against working too much. There was also the possibility that executives of the Black Market would see them working and want to take them away…

_____They were free to roam the city for the rest of the day. There were all kinds of markets near the downtown area--places that sold all kinds of goods, even the sorts of materials they could use to make another cassette-making press. And there were books, more than they ever expected! That was because one of the shops had an entire electronic archive of texts and had a rough little printing press. It was funny, how few people bothered to try such a setup when Zalem was running the city. Kyrie and Harrah each bought a book, went to an outdoor café to drink flavored coffee and enjoy the first few chapters. Later, as they walked back to Patrick's main restaurant, they thought about checking the restaurant's basement floor for concrete-covered doors. 

…

5.

…

_____A certain brown dog never did find the way back into the city after having wandered out beyond the wall. This city wall went on for several hundred miles, with only one entrance for every ten miles or so. No one cared if the stray came or went; the dog belonged to no one. It continued to wander along the wall, looking for a way back in. If the dog hadn't stopped to rest, maybe it would have made it. 

_____That dog's plight took place hours ago and was no longer a concern. Meanwhile, with the burning shine of the sun blazing overhead, the Adversary pondered a square section of wall. Its scanners and sensors were unable to get beyond the first few inches of wall. The intense rays of the sun were interfering with the infrared and X-ray scans. It would be hours yet before the sun would actually go down, before conditions would be amenable to scans. Yet the Adversary had all the time it needed. 

_____"Hey, be careful, man!" went a man's voice nearby. "That looks like something made by those crazy Zalem people! What if it's radioactive? What if that thing came down to kill us all in revenge? _You _don't know! It's sitting still now, but what if…?" The voice belonged to a scrubby man in baggy jeans and a ragged sweater--a large floppy hat on his head to block the hot sun. The sandals on his feet were made of asbestos and ropy straps--effective at keeping his feet off of the burningly hot hard ground. 

_____That thing… He was talking about the monster. To anyone else, it would have seemed as if that metal beast was sitting still--not doing anything. It was a massive metal statue, pondering, analyzing… By this time, a pile of grit had accumulated around its two metal hooves, and more of it made a fine layer of dusty grit. Six hundred clouds must have slowly passed overhead, and over six hundred winds must have blown by since the Adversary began sitting here. 

_____It was too bad that the two men here didn't notice the dog. "Don't get all paranoid!" responded the other one here, a male cyborg, approaching the Adversary. He was in a tee shirt and closer fitting jeans, old boots instead of sandals. _Because they look cool,_ he'd always told his drinking buddies back at the parts salvaging warehouse. "This thing could be worth a _ton_ of chips to the Black Market people! I mean, just look at those appendages: One's for close-range combat, and the other _has_ to be for some kind of projectile-throwing. It's got a _gun, _man! New gun technology's always worth plenty! Even if this thing doesn't have any new technology to sell, we can always sell its parts for scrap. Just let me get a closer look. Then we can bring our truck and tools around and…"

_____Those hours ago, the dog had mistook the tall metal monster for a statue and wanted to crouch in its shade. If the dog's nose had not been clogged with desert grit, it would have been able to smell the faint scent of blood on the Adversary's left claw-hand--the dried blood resembling a grotesque kind of cinnamon-colored paint. The dog was street-wise from its life on the sidewalks and back-lots--should have avoided this sort of death. But being so thirsty and hot, the dog simply didn't know any better.

_____"How do you know that thing still isn't on?" asked the man in floppy clothes and hat, still hanging back. "There's no telling if that thing is still active… No telling at all with what came down from Zalem after the accident up there. Anything strong enough to survive a nuclear explosion has _got_ to be tough enough to still be working!"

_____"Please, will you shut up!" went the cyborg in cowboy clothes. "Look… See? I'm standing _right_ next to it. Blah-blah-blah-h-h! Here I am, next to the big bad piece of shiny monster-junk. Ooh…! I think I'm gonna be _eaten alive_!" Then he began to dance and prance around the thing, hands waving in the air, kicking up his cowboy-booted feet and making goofy noises. 

_____How had the dog died? It died at the hand of the Adversary. When the silvery claw swept down, the life-stopping blow was almost an act of mercy. There was a brief shock of pain, and then there was none. All the sickness and misery the animal was feeling, it was soon over. It was long over. 

_____The man in floppy clothes clutched his floppy hat and looked especially worried. He expected that, at any second, something terrible was going to happen. Maybe Lobo was going to get blasted by that huge gun-arm. Or what if the giant metal monster just kicked him? Yeah, with those huge metal hooves, one kick would be enough. As it turned out, the metal claw did the trick.

______Audio-visual interference has been identified_, went the electronic message in the Adversary's heavy electronic brain. _If interference, then eliminate interference for optimal scanning conditions. _The optical sensors targeted the interference while the mobility processors calculated power and movement, then executed the commands.

_____The cyborg in cowboy clothes was Lobo, by the way. His name was would not matter in a moment anyway. A sound of high-speed motors whirring, the Adversary's three-tined claw-hand suddenly reach up to the sky like a nightmarish gesture of greeting. It was as if the thing was saying, _Hello, I'm a big and nasty robot-monster! Won't you be my victim today? _But, of course, the Adversary was in no mood for such friendliness--if its simple electronic brain had any room for "moods."

_____There was a massive swooping blur of motion that _whooshed_ through the air, and then the upper half of Lobo's electromechanical body was separated from his lower half--sparks, motor fluids and little parts spraying everywhere. Then the Adversary stomped over to where the upper half of Lobo writhed and struggled in the grit--before bringing down a metal hoof with an awful sound resulting. 

_____Dumb-struck with fear for an incredibly long and numb second, seeing Lobo done like that, the man in floppy clothes turned and ran. His asbestos sandals were coming off, and he was close to falling over--flailing his arms and screaming like a madman--but he was getting the Hell away from here! Why didn't Lobo ever listen to anybody?

_____The Adversary scanned the upper and lower halves of the body. There was still a minimum of sound coming from the upper half as the electromechanical innards were winding down, so it stomped the metal torso again… Then again… Before long, the bottom of its left hoof was wet with artificial circulatory fluids and various motor fluids. In the meanwhile, there was the sound of a truck getting fast away.

_____Before long, the noise and interference was gone. The wind was blowing a little harder, blowing some more desert grit through the air, but the Adversary's visual processors could compensate for that. It stomped back over to the section of wall it had been scanning, then continued to scan. 

…

_____"Like, oh my gosh!" went the pink-bodied cyborg-girl, her fluffy emerald-colored hair in pigtails. She was sitting in the payload area of a big-wheeled truck, looking through binoculars while her mouth worked some bubblegum. "Dude, did _you_ see _that_? Like, that big thing just went _wham, _and that poor guy in the funky clothes went _bang, _then _splat!_" Her synthetic face twisted up in an awful expression, as if she'd tasted too-rotten potatoes smeared with crap. "It was like… _Ew-w-w!_" She set down the binoculars then began to wriggle her hands in the air as if she was tasting something nasty. "_Ew-w-w-w-w! _That was so _nasty!_"

_____"Calm down, Mai," responded Kyle, sitting against one of the wheels and still looking through his pair of binoculars. His baseball cap shielded his head from the sun, and his light-colored pants and shirt did the same. "So long at it is not us ending up like him… What an idiot. In any case, it's something we'll have to inform Barabbas about...later. We have yet to find out if that cyborg or drone is a defensive measure by the city or someone's wayward creation."

_____"Like, _whatever_," went Mai. "But still… Dude, that was like, _so-o-o gross!_ When I kill people, I'm neat about it, okay? Like, I don't bash 'em up and, like, step all over 'em when they're down! _Eww!_ That's, like, so… _Icky! _That thing is, like, too big and too gross for me to even look at anymore!"


	5. Chapter Five

__

All The Colors of Yesterday

by Elliot Bowers

…

"Letter" (song excerpts)

lyrics by Nora Stevens Heath; vocal by Melissa Williamson

"The Swan"

lyrics by David Lynch; vocal by Julee Cruise

…

Chapter 5

…

_____It was a few hours after noon-time, getting close to the end of the city-wide work-day. Jonah didn't really care, though. Work, relaxation… It was all getting to be the same as these days just kept on in a steady going rhythm, going along, rolling along. So what about what happened to Zalem? Ah well, something like that was bound to happen some day--the death of that city. 

_____The idea of an eternal city is a lie. Everything fails and falls with time. Nothing is forever. Not love, not life. Not even Zalem. Nothing is forever, and no one is forever.

_____Jonah--also known as "John-Boy!" to friends--was going to die some day and not exist anymore. He just smirked at the thought of his own death, likely to come one of these days. He smirked at a lot of things, in fact, because he thought he'd seen everything there was to see in all the decades of his life. He'd seen things come and go, seen plenty more things just go. 

_____With his electromechanical body currently dressed in work coveralls, John-Boy was done with work for today: He had been driving his great big street-cleaning truck all day, and that was why the new people in charge paid him. Like Zalem, The Black Market didn't especially care if the streets were flawlessly clean, but the streets had to at least be kept clear of big trash and anything else likely to get in the way of trucks…and important peoples' cars. 

_____And anything that got in the way of street-cleaning trucks was sucked up from the street--then crushed. Attached to the front of John-Boy's street-maintenance vehicle was a huge vacuum-scoop that sucked up large chunks of trash that ended up in the street…along with the occasional stray dog or small child. Once in the tough metal machinery of John-Boy's truck, the obstructions were chopped up and crushed in back--a great big sucking and grinding machine on wheels! Later, whatever chopped up stuff there was stored in back would be disposed of in waste reprocessing centers throughout the city. 

_____As for children and small animals sometimes being sucked up… Well, it happened sometimes. Anyone or anything dumb enough to be in the street when a street-cleaner was at work deserved to be sucked in and chopped up by the machine. There were times when people deliberately laid out in the street and _let _themselves get sucked in, crunched up by John-Boy's truck. Heh-heh, _sucks_ to be those guys! 

_____Nothing surprised old John-Boy. He'd seen cyborgs tall as two-story buildings, skinless mutant-dogs with six legs ("_Those things are so ugly they ought to be illegal!"_), dark diseases that turned human blood into something oily while leaving the victims somewhat alive ("_Run away! Don't get infected!_"), and even a gigantic rusty flying machine with flames coming from its wing-engines ("_How the heck is that thing flying?_"). And all of that was back when Zalem was still in charge of the world's cities. Oh yeah…! John-Boy had seen it all--having lived as long as he did in the city.

_____Being a cyborg was a radical extension to one's lifespan, at least the life of the brain: So long as a cyborg didn't do anything stupid or the brain didn't starve to death, one could live almost forever--simply getting one "new" body after another. New was a relative word, since it was a long while since any really _new _cyborg-bodies were made. Most everyone's body was either used or made from old parts. 

_____So there he was, relaxing in the front seat of his street-cleaning truck and watching daylight die its daily death, when he finally saw something he'd never…seen…before! It was enough to first make him become curious, then enough to make him sit up. "_What the…?_"

_____It was burning bus, driving along moving along the street as if there was nothing wrong with it. He'd seen plenty of vehicles catch on fire before--bad engines or acts of arson. But that thing was still moving. And…burning? Heck, the thing was in _blazes! _Flames were all over it and inside, hot burning fires gushing from the open windows and the top of the vehicle being one gigantic pyre of heat and light--the smoke billowing up to the sky. 

_____There it was, all in flames and still going. As all the street traffic had stopped, the burning bus calmly drove between the lines of vehicles on the road. The vehicle was moving so normally and calmly that John-Boy had the impression that the driver may as well have been singing, _Tra-la-la… It's a beautiful day!_ _What's a little bus-fire?_

_____John-Boy closed his eyes, opened them again. Yep, it was still there! But now, the thing had slowed to a stop at the sidewalk. It didn't come to a complete stop immediately because its tires were melting. Brakes applied, the tires left long and nasty looking streaks of stinking melted rubber. But the vehicle did stop. The passenger side-door opened for two seconds, letting out more flames, and then it closed again.

_____Then the blazing vehicle began to move forward again. For a frightening moment, John-Boy thought the damned thing was going to ram this truck! Instead, it steered around and went on. But for a few seconds, it was so close that John-Boy could almost--_almost_--see the shadowy driver of the big burning thing. 

_____The traffic began moving again. John-Boy _slowly_ edged over to this modified truck's door and climbed down. Going along the city sidewalk, he walked over to the back of this street-cleaner to see if the burning bus was… Nope, the thing was gone. He went past the front of his street-cleaner and over to where the burning bus had stopped. Indeed, there were still the thick black streaks made by the burnt rubber. And the thick stink of burning rubber was still in the air… 

_____Shaking his head and still not quite believing what he'd seen, John-Boy turned around and went back to the big street-cleaning truck. Whoever was pulling a stunt like that--driving a burning bus--was either suicidal brave or psychotically insane. Being a cyborg made one vulnerable to heat: electromechanical bodies don't burn, but the brain can certainly overheat…and die! Who would be insane-brave enough to drive a burning bus? And, more importantly, who was nuts enough to take a ride on it?

…

_____Kyrie and Harrah were also done with work for today. But before heading back to their little basement-room, they decided to relax at one of Patrick's other restaurants. Both were in slacks and sleeveless blouse, wearing their long dark hair tied back with crimson-red ribbons. In addition to the drinking bar, the tables for dining, and the couches for relaxing, this place had a small stage for musicians. In fact, a blonde-haired cyborg-girl was done setting up her synthesizer… A blonde-haired cyborg-girl in blue jeans and red sleeveless top--her slender silvery arms and fine metal fingers working as she continued the setup. That done, she sat down in the seat and began her song without any sort of announcement. 

_____The song began with what sounded like a piano and some other instrument, strumming out a sad and persistent backbeat. This made Kyrie and Harrah set down their news-sheets… They found themselves listening. 

…

__

….Am I still friends with Carlene?

I'm sure that I'm still laughing…

Aren't I? 

Aren't…I? 

…

….Hey there to my future self, 

if you forget how to smile

…I have this to tell you, 

remember it once in a while

…Ten years ago your past-self

prayed for your happiness…

Ple-e-ease don't…lose hope…!

…

_____The rest of the song became more strident, though the overall tone of it was still surrounded by sadness and darkness. It brought to mind hope and struggle against sadness and darkness, against all the dark troubles and pains that came in life. It was a song that a great musician from long ago would probably have described as "tragically beautiful."

__

_____When it was over, there was silence for a few seconds as the last of the notes were played out. The blonde cyborg-girl stopped playing and bowed her head in the applause that followed. They really did like that song! Then she got up from the seat and went behind the mini-stage's curtain. Maybe she was getting something, or changing her outfit for another performance? Then something caught the twins' attention. 

__

_____What? Kyrie and Harrah turned their heads to look out the restaurant window. They caught a glimpse of what looked like a little girl or something, her white gown and strands of her long pale hair fluttering in the city wind. Maybe the "little girl" was actually a petite cyborg with white-metal body and synthetic hair? They couldn't be sure. 

_____After all, it was just a glimpse. It could have been anything. "Who _was _that kid?" asked Kyrie. She looked across the table at her sister. "I thought I saw… I don't know, someone short and with pale-blonde hair. Don't remember seeing her around here before."

_____"Well, yeah, anyone can dye their hair. Or get a new hair-set if they're like us. Cyborgs," responded Harrah. "But that girl we just saw, I'm not sure. I thought I also saw something in her eyes… Like, she was _stalking _us or something. Creepy." 

_____While Harrah and Kyrie talked, two more customers came in. Both of them were fleshies, both in the same style of coveralls and work-shirt worn with thick-toed boots--mechanics. They even had similar facial features. But beyond their outfits and similar facial features, they were physically different. 

_____One was big and wide, a large chubby face atop a broad-chested and big-bellied torso--arms and legs massively thick with both fat and muscle, his big round face having a sort of tired and serous look. His brother was thin and skinny, an active and energetic look to him. They came over to this table….

_____Hey! It's Scotch and Duct! The twins energetically waved and smiled, and the brothers ambled on over to this table with matching expressions on their faces. Scotch moved over to one seat, and his brother sat in the chair opposite--the brothers facing each other across the table. "_Hi, guys!_" cheered the twin girls in unison. 

_____"Hee-hee-hee…! Didn't expect to run into you two in this great big city! It's changed just a teeny tiny little-bit since my brother and I were last here, but it's still the same old city! Hee-hee-hee-hee…!" giggled Scotch. 

_____"Yeah, ladies… For _once_, I agree with my brother," added Duct. "Sorta, though. I dunno… It's the same ol' big city, but under different management--Zalem bein' _irradiated_ an' all. My brother and I got tired of the farm, had to get _away. _See how the rest of the world was doin'. We got ourselves jobs at the gladiator arena under the _Cinnamon Brew _sponsorship."

_____"Hee-hee-hee…! Ever drink _Cinnamon Brew _before?" added Scotch. "It's some kind of soda-pop full of synthetic flavoring and sugar. It's got a heck of a lot of zero-waste nutrition for cyborgs_,_ but it's just _too_ _darned sugary!_ Sweet is sweet, but _too_ sweet makes me feel too hyper--like being a kid again! Hey-hey! While I'm on the subject of kids… How's Ritchie doing?"

_____The girls looked at each other, eyes going wide. The dark sadness returned--about how and when Ritchie was killed in traffic. Not all of the sadness returned, though: They had stopped crying for Ritchie weeks ago. He was gone, and he wasn't coming back. There was nothing they could have done to stop what happened.…

_____Duct saw the mirrored expressions on their faces, looks of surprise and sadness. He understood: Ritchie was dead. Indeed, the city was still the same old city: still randomly dangerous. People died all the time; it didn't matter how. Moments passed, and he thought about how to word an answer…

_____"Hmmph…" he finally said. "Oh, I see… I you girls did yer best. I've known you two since you became cyborgs. You're good people. Least, you saved him from Barabbas an' all. You kept him from dying that night, and that's good."

_____Harrah and Kyrie looked down at the wooden table-top, stared at it. They would _not _cry… Not cry…! "Ooh, guess what!" suddenly went Scotch, bravely trying to break the blue mood. "Hee-hee! Our sponsors got their hands on a really super-duper body dug up from somewhere! We're trying to get it working for a new gladiator, but we can't patch into the mobility systems. Hee-hee-hee…! So if you two have a free afternoon or something sometime soon, drop by the West End Arena and go up to the left-side entrance! Tell 'em the Johnson brothers sent you. We'll tell the security guys to be on the lookout for two cute cyborg-girls with long dark hair and far-out mechanical engineering skills!" He looked right and left, at Kyrie and Harrah. "It'll be like old times, only at a new place!"

_____Breaking into smiles, the twins thought it over a second. One of them answered. "Hmm… Yeah, I guess we could drop by or something in the next few days…. Right, sis?" The other twin nodded in agreement, smiling. They'd do this for old-time's sake. After all, there were almost no other familiar faces in the city…other than their own.

…

2.

…

______Sque-e-eak…!_ The man-sized teddy-bear opened the wooden door for its mistress. Well, it wasn't actually a teddy-bear, and the door wasn't actually wooden. That cuddly exterior was just a cute-looking covering over an otherwise horrid-looking metal beast. Beneath the huggable brown exterior, there was a war-machine beneath--one that existed to serve the mistress.

_____Walking past the teddy bear twice her size, she looked around the control room--monitors glowing in the gloom beyond the light spilling in from the open doorway. Not enough light, apparently. "Stupid idiot! How the _Hell _am I supposed to see everything in all this dark gloom, huh? There's nothing in here but some CRT monitors for illumination and stuff! Turn …on…the_… lights!_" she yelled. For emphasis, she reared back her left foot and _kicked _the teddy-robot in the padded shin. _Thunk-k-k! _"I ought to wipe your memory and put in another O.S. core!"

_____With the sound of mechanical gears whirring, the teddy-bot stepped into the room and flicked a few heavy switches with its left hand--a bit more difficult to do as its three segmented fingers were encumbered by the thick woolen "paws." But the job was done. 

______Fwick! _The lights came on. It revealed what was expected: all the monitors and control consels having been installed against the walls. The microphones were set in place, and all of the systems seemed operational. Even a copy of her big comfy leather swivel-seat was moved exactly where it was in her other station.

_____She hated going to her other station! Hated, hated, _hated!_ The outside air was smelly there, and everything was all dirty and rusty. Of course, the rusty outside there made for good camouflage against snooping outsiders--those raggedly dressed peons! But still…! "Ha-ha-ha! Pee-ons!" she said aloud at the thought. "_Pee_ _on_ the peons!" Well, she'd do exactly that if she ever needed to urinate: have her robots kidnap an idiot from Scrap Iron City or someplace, tie him down, then soak him with a lot of wet yellow pee.

_____Then she'd kill him, because _no one_ was to know of her existence. No one. If the world found out, then maybe whatever happened to her father would happen to her as well. Except, this time, it wouldn't be an accident. 

_____No one on the outside would find out--ever. And if any of those peons ever came here, she'd have them killed in a loud, horrible, and thoroughly disgusting way. _Boom-boom!_ It was as easy as that!

_____Climbing into the big leather swivel-seat, the mistress raised her fingers to one of the keyboards, typed in an electronic address, then spoke into the microphone. Of course, it would have been a great deal easier to install some kind of electronic port directly into her wrists--to connect to consoles. But the idea of metal ports in her perfect synthetic skin was icky… The mistress _hated_ to feel icky. She liked to feel as human as possible--more than human. 

_____It was starting to rain outside, the rain coming down on this palace and onto the empty avenues. She wanted to go outside and play in the rain, splash in the puddles and laugh. But she had to do this first. _That_ kind of fun would have to wait. _This_ kind of fun had to be done first.

…

_____It was also raining here in the city, the rain coming down on the West-Side Arena--iron-gray clouds pouring down water. The thick heavy rain made for heavy sheets of wetness that covered the hard buildings and streets in water, making truck tires splash and city people wear all kinds of raincoats--especially the cyborgs. Though most body alloys weren't likely to rust, the possibility of getting too much water between the metal segments and joints made some uncomfortable.

_____Inside Mr. Coleco's second-floor office, things were dry and comfortable--the rainy industrial city just a view outside his picture window. It was a well-decorated office, about as colorful and exuberant as Mr. Coleco's candy-colored business outfits. There were pictures and trophies all over the pedestals and in glass wall-cabinets, posters on walls where there weren't trophy cabinets. 

_____However, the orange-haired Mr. Coleco himself wasn't behaving especially colorfully now. He was sitting stiffly and still, his head tilted slightly to the right and his eyes open…though his eyes seemed unfocused on anything in particular. Every so often, he would nod and mutter. He had been this way for eighteen minutes or so. 

_____Then he blinked and stood up from his seat. Smiling, Mr. Coleco knew what he had to do know. Though not an especially cruel man, he would be if necessary. It was what was demanded of him right now.

…

_____Going through a hall and down an elevator brought him to one of several basement levels beneath the gladiatorial arena itself--into another and much longer hallway. Down here, a person simply knew he or she was underground. The walls were harder and more solid-looking, like the rougher floor. And the air felt different--a little heavier and colder. Sounds of tinny radio music and heavy tools could be heard coming through the few and far-in-between doors, the muffled sounds echoing along the hard corridor. 

_____ A few minutes of walking brought him to the right door--_Garage 3H. _He opened the door and walked into a large, industrial-looking busy room: currently, the most well-equipped repair garage at this building, with at least eighteen cyborg and fleshie mechanics working on one project. There were massive machines and portable scaffolds along the concrete walls, along with plenty of tool-covered tables and spare parts. They were all working on the big thing in the middle of the room: a vicious-looking cyborg-body, mechanics on scaffolds and ladders working on parts of it. Everything was covered over with the sounds of people talking, tools clanking and someone's radio playing--the smell of metal, oils and cleaning fluids in the garage's air.

_____It was nowhere near the size of some of the bigger gladiator bodies, only ten feet tall. But what it lacked in size it made for in appearance of sheer brutality. The arms looked like construction machines, and the solid armored legs were squat and monstrous. It had been painted various colors, red and gray and with caution striping on some parts--giving it a more nasty appearance. Too bad the big broken thing was worthless.

_____Worthless, unless those new mechanics could get it working. Mr. Coleco had personally seen to it that Scotch and Duct were hired, having introduced them to Mr. Muyamoto himself. The two brothers were great at repairing and bolstering the mobility systems of every single cyborg gladiator they'd worked on so far--even fixing big old Gogam's clunky self. They must have the ability to fix the thing.

_____Looking around the busy garage space, this business-suited man sought out Scotch and Duct… Ah, there they were--standing at a parts-covered table talking to two rather pretty-looking twin girls. Dollishly beautiful, with pretty faces and long dark hair, their metal bodies sleek and feminine. If they weren't cyborgs and circumstances were different, he would have asked those twins out on dates.

_____But this was no time for making love connections. Sneering, Mr. Coleco walked over to that work-table. "Why isn't this thing working yet, huh?" he asked Scotch and Duct, who turned to face him. "I had to ask mechanics from two other teams to help you out. _Ask _them! _After_ work-hours! Almost begging! And _everybody_ knows that _nobody_ is supposed to work after hours. With _a-a-all _of you busy, with _a-a-a-all _of this extra labor and _all _of this time, tell me… Tell me why you can't get this junk going." 

_____By now, some mechanics over there and up there had stopped in their work and now looking in this direction. It became a little quieter save for the blasting radio. The skinny brother Scotch went wide-eyed while his big beefy brother crossed his massive arms and patiently listened to Mr. Coleco's angry ranting.

_____"See, it goes somethin' like this, Mr. Coleco," began Duct. "Your mechanics ain't seen this kind of body before, neither have my brother an' me. Some of us don't even reckon' it's a cyborg _body_ at all. It's got no artificial life-support, and the mobility processors are too simple-like to work with a real-live human brain. We were tryin' to get it to start. But it's hard to do, seein' as it's been sittin' out in the wastelands for so long. It's like it done shut itself off… Waitin' for somethin'."

_____Then one of the twins girls spoke up. "Mr. Coleco? I would like to say something," she said. "My sister and I… We know enough about the body to make it work again. But we think…it's a little too dangerous."

_____"Because we've seen this kind of machine before," said her sister. She took up a computer circuit-card from the table. "This is just one of several independent circuit-boards from inside the big thing. We hooked it up to a computer to read the OS. It's a killing machine, not a gladiator's body--not built for a human brain. All the thing wants to do is attack and destroy until…"

_____"So what!" blurted Mr. Coleco. He felt himself losing his temper, losing control. "I want to see that bad boy fired up and ready for action! Does it even turn _on_? Why am I even bothering to repeat myself to you two… Get it started, or I'll have some of my Black Market colleagues make you disappear! Yes, Zalem's dead, and the only law in town now is _Black Market _law! We can kill brains if we want, including yours! So get the heck to work!" He reached into his jacket and pulled out a thick-looking pistol.

_____A gun… Kyrie and Harrah slowly turned, moved to comply. They slowly took up two of the circuit boards while that radio continued to play loudly. The mechanics got down from the scaffolding built around the big red metal body to let the twins install the circuit boards--everyone else's eyes on Mr. Coleco and his handgun. For the next few minutes, there was just the sound of the twins working and the radio playing…

_____Finally, the twins closed up the chest panel and came down the ladder--trailing a few cables from the big thing's chest and to a table equipped with a computer. But everything became frenzied and crazy before they even reached the table.

_____The first thing that happened was that the mighty left arm _tore_ itself loose from the scaffolding, tools and a ladder thrown every which way. People stood stunned in fear when the thing whipped up its other arm. It kicked aside tables and began growling… _Growling. _The sound was a combination of diesel engine and horrible beast. 

_____It was none other than the Adversary, revealed and repaired in working order. With all the scaffolding covering half the arms and work tables obscuring the feet and that bizarre paint-job, Kyrie and Harrah couldn't recognize it before. It must have put itself in a low-power mode all this time as its electronic brain calculated ways into the city to find whoever it wanted to kill and destroy. Now it was in here, in this underground garage, and there was nowhere to go. 

_____Its metal hooves clomped down tables and over fallen cyborgs as its mighty claw-arm swiped over tables, smacking and cutting anything and anyone in its way. And the way it was rampaging around the garage, everyone seemed to be in the way! "_R-r-r-rgh… Where is Target? Where is Target? Memory parsing error, data lost. Locate Target!" _it growled.

_____Mr. Coleco's cockiness was suddenly replaced with dread and fear. He staggered back and took aim with the pistol. _Crack! Crack-crack! _Of course, the bullets just pinged off the Adversary's inches-thick alloy plates. It really was useless, firing the gun.

_____There were only two doors out of this garage and the big roll-up garage door. But with so many people panicking, not everyone could get out in time. Not even Mr. Coleco could get out, smacked by a swipe the great big claw-hand. He died, of course--lying still and dead with his pistol still in his hand: useless against the gigantic metal beast. Duct was killed in an especially horrible way. Not wanting to leave his brother behind, Scotch was the next victim.

_____Harrah and Kyrie could just look up as the thing stomped over to them. It was just so huge, so frightening… They couldn't run, couldn't… _Fwoosh! _Their metal bodies were opened up_ with _just one cut, then stepped on by both metal hooves. No one could have survived that…

_____With a few more minutes of chaos and madness, it was soon over. The few people who managed to get out of here were long-gone and running to get some help, the sounds of their shouts echoing away down the corridor. Yet that radio was still playing… Not for long! 

__

_____Clomp-clomp-clomp… The Adversary stomped over to the little loud radio--_still _playing--on a now-split metal table. It took aim with its arm cannon and let loose a hot bright _blast_ of plasma. That done and everything destroyed to its specified analysis, it stomped over to the garage door and cut that thing open.

_____Feeling cold and getting colder, numb all over, Scotch heard the Adversary going away. He eased himself to sitting up, just to make sure… The monster was gone. And all around here, there were bodies everywhere. Cyborgs, fleshies, everyone and everything here was ruined. His friends Kyrie and Harrah were lying on their backs, looking like broken and ruined like life-sized toys mishandled by a cruel and monstrous child. His brother was right here, obviously dead. When he felt himself sinking in to unconsciousness, swooning from blood-loss and injuries to his vitals, Scotch suspected that he would probably never wake up again. He didn't care now, as everyone he cared about was dead as far as he knew. Everything faded of into a relaxing darkness as his mind floated into what felt like…_a warm breeze…_

…

3.

… 

______It was an unusually warm breeze blowing…_along this city sidewalk, nice and relaxing. Up above, all above the buildings, the sky was a sort of reddish tone as the day was dying. With everything painted in sunset tones of crimson-orange, Scotch was feeling good and relaxed, walking along. Few things felt as good and relaxing as a nice calm walk close to sunset. And since there were no other people around here, he was free to just walk and think…

__

_____Now, he tried to think about how the heck he got out of that underground garage, but just couldn't remember. Did he break down a door and get out? No… How about using an elevator? Nope, he didn't do that, either. The recent memory of his escape was fuzzy and blurry, as if he was looking back through a messed-up camera lens smeared with reddish candy-sauce. And then there was the laughter. He remembered laughter... Why would he remember someone _laughing_ at something? Ah well, he was out now. Whatever happened back there had just happened its own way. 

__

_____Then, for no good reason, Scotch decided to cross the street. He walked along that sidewalk over there for a while…until he came to an alley that branched off to the right. It was unusually dark in that alley, as if it was already night-time in there--the dying light of this day being blocked by something unseen. But he didn't care. He just wanted to go into that alley, just because he felt like it…

_____Stepping into the darkened alley made him feel a little odd, as if invisible pressures from the two walls were pressing him. He stumbled over a few bumps and felt himself losing his balance, but Scotch kept going. Well, alleys tend to be a little messed up--especially the darkened ones. Maybe he'd just keep going along until… 

__

_____…Until a sudden warmer breeze buffeted him. The breeze brought with it the smell of burning sulfur, probably from people burning things to keep warm during the oncoming night. Truth was, it got cold around here at night, and not everyone had nice apartments to stay in. But why start burning stuff now and waste whatever supply of burnable stuff they'd salvaged? The sun was just setting.

__

_____As Scotch thought this, he nearly tripped over yet another piece of clutter--the concrete beneath his feet jagged and uneven. Sometimes he lost his footing in holes, and he got the idea that there was nothing beneath. It was just so darned _dark_ in this alley! And just then, he noticed someone: an old stranger in coveralls and work-clothes, sitting on a metal crate. He was at a low table…really a big old circle of polished wood atop a broken appliance. 

_____The old stranger was playing an even stranger game. Atop the makeshift table were two sets of blurry, green-colored playing cards with funny designs tattooed to them. Two blurry cards were on the side of the old stranger; four other cards were on the other side. Blurry? Yes… It was hard for Scotch to focus his eyes on the green cards for too long; they gave him a headache.

__

_____Instead, he looked at the old stranger, whose beard was now a light red color for some reason--his rough and liver-spotted hands deftly rapid-shuffling more of those blurry playing cards. The old stranger and the table were easier to see because of an off-kilter light bolted to one of the alley walls, shining roughly down on the table. A person would think that such an old man's hands would be shaky and useless, especially since he was still human--a fleshie. The toxin in the air and water, along with drinking, should have ruined his nervous system by now. At that age, most people were cyborgs already. But not the old stranger… _Fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip…_ Flick! He stopped shuffling the green cards and stared across the table. 

_____There seemed to be someone else at the low makeshift table, someone obscured by the darkness and shadows. _Why the heck was it so dark around here?_ Scotch ducked and leaned side to side, trying to get a better view of the other at that table. But it was no use; he couldn't see who else was at the table.

__

_____There was another whiff of something burning, from beyond this dark alley as the old stranger made his move. He raised a blurry playing card and smiled a drooling smile, then set it down in the middle of the table. The shadowy opponent growled and grumbled angrily while the old stranger took two cards from the other side of the table and slid them back over to his side. 

__

_____Then, something else happened… Scotch thought he saw the old stranger taking two cards from the other side of the table. Instead, it turned out that he was just taking one card from the shadowy opponent. Still giving that drooly smile, the old stranger said, "Sometimes, I sing them right in my own way! This wicked game… Don't be flippant!"

______Wham! _Snarling, the shadowy opponent had _slammed _a dark fist on the low makeshift table, making it flip up in the alleyway air like a gigantic wooden coin. It seemed to hang in the air for a long second, turning over and over, and then it came back down with a loud clattering and battering sound…landing right where it was before. Impossible! But there it was… Even the cards on the table were still there.

_____Pondering the impossibility of this event, Scotch felt some more winds blowing through the alley. These weren't comfortable warm winds; these were hot winds--like winds from a furnace. And the winds had a horrible burning smell to them, making him want to get out of here. Yes, he had to…_get out of here. Feeling weak and cold, he made how way away from the place where those two played with blurry green cards…_

…

__

_____"Gya-a-ah!" he shouted. Scotch awakened, and everything was in sharp clarity. He was in the room of a city medical clinic, atop a white table in a generally white room: white-colored walls, white florescent lighting, white medical equipment, and the female cyborg doctor wearing white clothes. She was holding a syringe in gray hands. He stared at it, gasping for air and clutching his chest. 

_____ He felt around… Felt skin, not metal. He was stripped down to his loose underwear, and there was a tight bandaged wrapped round his middle. "Hey! So you _didn't_ make me into a cyborg. Good news!" he said aloud. "Uh, no offense about the cyborg comment, doctor-lady… It's a miracle! You know, I just had this funny dream…"

_____"Lie down, please. And don't think your troubles are over yet," said the blonde-haired female doctor, her voice square and firm. Under other circumstances, maybe her blue eyes would have been seen as pretty. But right now, they looked cold and icy. "I've given you an injection of a cardiovascular stimulant compounded with an earlier anesthetic, so you will _feel_ fine for a while--but you are _not _fine! Your blood pressure was dropping, and some of your vital organs are in especially bad shape. The internal hemorrhaging was stopped, but tissue damage remains. Any other day, we'd give you a blood transfusion, but we're running low on your blood type today. 

_____"Now, I've given you these injections as so would be conscious and clear-headed enough to make a decision about what you want to do now. There are an assortment of cyborg bodies available, of various types and abilities. You must consider…"

_____"_Cyborg?_" he shouted. "You wanna take my _brain_ out of my _body, _put it through some wacky chemical alteration process, and put it in a machine? Are you _nuts_? I don't want to even hear about that! Where the _heck_ is my brother? No, don't answer that question. You don't know and I don't know. Doctors know a lot but don't know everything, you know. And I know what I'm gonna do now. I'm getting out of here!"

_____"No you are not…!" she said, reaching for him. Moving with stimulant-induced speed, he knocked away her gray hand and then shoved the doctor's shoulders. Scotch was on his way to the door as she fell backwards to the floor, tangled in her white medical coat. Yeah, he was too fast for her--was even fast enough to nab his neatly piled clothes before exiting the room. 

_____He was getting out of here! A quick run along the hall, down the stairs and out the front door, and he was outside. Luckily, someone had parked he and his brother's dune buggy close by. Who brought his car around? He didn't care, was just glad it was here for him.

__

…

_____Driving the afternoon city streets in the dune buggy, he made his way back to the bar where he'd met up with Kyrie and Harrah yesterday. He didn't want to drive back to the apartment just yet, not yet. He had to at least see if his friends, the twins, were okay. Good, there were a few open parking spaces in the side lot. 

_____His vehicle parked, he realized that he was still in his underwear--and wearing a bandage around his skinny midsection. He squirmed and moved around in the front seat as he put on his coveralls, shirt and socks. Money-chips were still in the picket. The shoes came on easy. And then…

__

_____"Wooh…!" he went, putting a hand to his sweaty forehead, feeling a bit _wo-o-ozy_ now. The stimulant that doctor gave him must be wearing off, and he was feeling a bit sick. Moving shakily, he made his way around to the front of the pub and heard…singing? Someone was singing, a girl… Someone nearby. The beautiful melody and the sweet voice bolstered his spirit, giving him the strength to go in.

…

4.

…

_____He entered the pub, the lights dim and afternoon sunlight coming in through the side-window--closed the door behind him. The singing was just fading down, getting quiet… And people clapped: loudly, _thunderously, _slamming their hands together and standing up to praise the singer on stage. Because every table was filled with customers, because all the stools at the drinking bar was occupied, because there were even customers standing along the walls, all of that clapping made for a massive sound! 

_____Scotch turned to look at the source of the beautiful singing…and saw that she was as delicately beautiful as her voice. The girl was a bit below five feet in height and was slender, delicate. She had on a glowingly white gown, almost as light as her too-pale skin and her moonbeam-pale hair and skin, her round and dollish face looking lost somewhere between thirteen and a (very petite) twenty-three. The only color about her outfit was a red scarf around her slender neck, a contrast to her large green eyes. A _girl…_or a woman? It was hard to tell her age… 

_____The girl bowed and sat on a stool, the microphone seeming large in her small hands. One of the waitresses smiled and brought her a tall glass of water. She nearly drained the entire glass without taking a breath, some water remaining in the bottom. Then she did something odd, something Scotch didn't quite understand. 

_____She raised the glass and used the last of the water to wet her scarf. Bizarre… Ah well, we all have our quirks. Scotch walked over to the bar, surrounded by the din of people talking loudly about the singer. He managed to squeeze between two big guys on stools to get closer to the bar and he spoke up--trying to get the attention of the red-haired female bartender. She was busy cleaning mugs with her gloved hands. 

_____"Excuse me…!" said Scotch, loud enough to be heard above the din, which got him rude looks from some here at the bar. Carlene, the bartender on duty now, looked at him. "_This was where Kyrie and Harrah used to work, right?" _Now his own voice was beginning to sound a little funny…another side-effect of the painkilling drugs.

_____Carlene stopped cleaning the beer mug and walked closer. She set down the towel and mug, put them down… "_Used_ to work here…? What do you mean?" she asked. Then her eyes went wide. "Oh my… Did something happen to them?"

_____Now Scotch was _really_ beginning to feel not-good… The effects of the stimulant must be almost done by now. Worse, the pain in his midsection was beginning to seep through. He shook his head to shake off some of the wooziness, leaned harder against the bar. "What I'm trying to say is… What I mean… Something bad happened at the West-Side Arena. An accident. We were working on a body salvaged from the wastelands, see. Or we _thought_ it was a body. The big thing went berserk..."

_____As Scotch said this, Carlene's eyes widened. "West-Side Arena! That's where Kyrie and Harrah said they were going today! What happened to them! Where are they! They're not…" She stared, her eyes becoming angry. "What the _Hell _were you guys doing there?"

_____The skinny, injured mechanic felt that female bartender's angry eyes stare into him. Now he was beginning to feel himself reach the limits of his endurance. His brother was dead, and so were those twins. Here he was, his insides half-ruined, and now it looked as if this bartender wanted to kill him… He was probably going to end up a cyborg before the day was done, or he'd be dead. Nothing was going right, nothing at all.

_____"I'm… I'm _sorry_, lady," said Scotch as pain and sickness began to leak up from his bandage-strapped abdomen beneath his coveralls. "_Sorry about…everything…_" He put his left hand on his midsection, then looked down… Just as he thought: there was a patch of red wetness there, where some blood was beginning to soak through bandages, through shirt, and through coveralls front. Carlene's eye-focus followed his hand, and she stared as Scotch fell back and collapsed to the floor… 

_____While Carlene went out from behind the drinking bar to help Scotch, the lights dimmed as the house crew powered up the pub's sound system for another song from the snow-haired girl on the stage. In the dimness, no one really noticed or heard Carlene kneeling on both knees ant trying to rouse Scotch. With gentle synthesizer bell-tones and other instruments for a sad back-melody, the girl's singing again filled the space…

__

…

You-u-u make the tears of lo-o-ove

….flow like they did when I sa-a-aw

…the dy-ing swan

The swan that died in da-a-rk-ness

….I want your smile!

…

I dreamt of your swan-smile

…and then wings moved the air!

Water-rings widened, as bells sounded

….in the ni-i-ight!

…

Then your smile died

…On the wa-a-ater

It was on-ly-a-reflect-ion

…dy-ing with

…the swa-a-an...

…

_____One of the waitresses drove a van out front, the van they usually used to transport crates of food, wine, and other restaurant supplies. Now they were going to use it for a temporary, makeshift ambulance…if there ever was a such thing as an ambulance these days. With Scotch loaded in back, one of the pub workers agreed to keep him from flopping around on the way to the clinic. Carlene could do nothing but close the doors and watch as the van went off and away.

_____She went back inside, into the music-filled dimness. Some of the customers were looking in the direction of the front door, which let in afternoon sunlight. Carlene closed the door and walked between tables to get back to the drinking bar… No, she couldn't start working again just yet; her synthetic velvet gloves were stained red with blood. With the wonderful singing still going, Carlene went through the door left of the bar and into the staff area, past the kitchen. 

_____There was a small washroom back here, where she was able to take off the bloody velvet gloves and wash her hands in the hard sink. Even when the crimson stains were gone from her metal fingers and palms, she kept rinsing and rinsing…even as tears began to well up in her own eyes. 

_____The truth was, Carlene lost too many people she knew to stupid things. Her parents worked at a metals reprocessing plant… Both died on different days, having fallen into the gnashing machinery and were ground to bits. Later on, she lost a nice friend who went and tried playing Motorball for money. His head was head knocked off when the action got rough. Ironically, he thought Motorball was safer than the job his father had in working in the factory-buildings.

_____She turned off the faucet, her solid gray fingers turning the silvery faucet-knob. Maybe she had to stop caring about people... Yes, maybe that was the solution. It seemed as if every other person Carlene knew was hurt or killed because of stupid things. She didn't really know the twins Harrah and Kyrie that well, but she felt sorry for them anyway. They were probably still teenagers when they were killed in that work-related accident at that arena. Why did people have to die because of so many…_stupid _things? 

_____The wash-room door opened a little, and the waitress peeked inside. "Hey… Are you okay in there?" she asked. "You've been in there for a while. Should I take over the bar? I know how to make most of the drinks customers want…"

_____"No… No, I'm fine! Really, I am!" said Carlene, smiling and wiping tears from her synthetic face. "Yeah, I'm coming out right now. Be there in a second," she said, looking at her reflection in this washroom mirror above the sink. Her white blouse and dark vest were still crisp, and her tight-dark pants were also presentable--shoes still neat. She'd have to soak the gloves in cleaning solution later, though. Oh well, it wasn't too much of a problem to serve drinks and such with bare metal hands… The kitchen staff dealt with food; all Carlene had to worry about was handling the drinks. Still, she just didn't like to work with metal showing. 

_____Another look at herself, and she left the wash-room. Carlene left the gloves next to the sink, would probably get them later or something. Some of the customers were curious, but all of them were thirsty. Soon enough, she was soon busy pouring beer from the taps, pouring wine from bottles and mixing some of the fancier drinks. It was a full house already, and the sun wasn't even setting yet. The strange new girl's singing must be especially powerful to draw in so many customers so soon. 

…

5.

…

_____Most all of the customers already had bottles of drink and mugs full of various refreshments, holding them in their hands (be those hands flesh or metal) or setting them atop tables as they crowded around one particular table in the room. Carlene didn't have to serve so many people now as they were primarily distracted by the strange new girl--the singer--who had only come in here hours ago. People were asking her questions and making comments, and she responded in her light and small voice between bites of her food. 

_____For someone so small and thin, she seemed to have a large appetite, eating a lot of meat. She was already on her second plate of premium meat cuts. What kind of meat? Well, nobody asks where meats come from these days: So long as the stuff tastes good and doesn't make a person sick afterward, nobody really cares. The pale-haired waif just kept eating the stuff… Maybe she was infected with some kind of intestinal parasite, or maybe her metabolism was just ridiculously high. Fleshie kids needed to eat plenty as they needed to grow…

_____Then again, the female cyborg bartender suspected that the girl wasn't so young. The slight but noticeable feminine curves beneath the girl's gown suggested she was at least coming of age. And her delicate face had a sharpness of features that bespoke someone not quite a child. There were diseases out there that stunted people's growth, mutant variations of illnesses from centuries ago. Or it could be genetic; maybe she was just meant to be small. Few people had unusually pale hair like that: pale, like fresh moonlit snow. And her eyes, they were large and emerald-green--almost inhuman. 

_____Taking advantage of the slow-down in customer drinking, Carlene kept cleaning beer mugs behind the bar and listened to the crowd massed around that strange girl. They asked her where she learned how to sing, and she replied that she simply "knew" how to make music…from an early age. Just a little practice, and she was able to sing better in time… Her parents? They were far away. And that was all she knew about them. She had to earn her money singing now. Where did she come from, then? She said she came from the same place her parents did. Her gown was white and so were her little shoes… But why the red scarf? She has such beautiful skin, and to cover any of it with such a floppy scarf was a shame. 

_____That was when she went silent, the flow in the questioning stopped. Carlene looked up from the mug she was currently cleaning and saw that the girl's cheeks took on a deep blushing red. Flustered, she barely answered, "I… I don't like to talk about it. Please…" The guy that asked the question seemed embarrassed, and no one else asked that question. 

______Cli-click_… _Click! _Heads turned to look as the front door opened. In walked the broad-chested cyborg owner of this establishment--Patrick himself. Looking quickly around, he was vaguely confused for just a second. There were all of those customers over there in a corner at the right side of the main room, people at tables and standing around. Good thing was that they all had drinks with them, paying customers. But what brought all of their attention to there?

_____As the customers returned their attention to the girl, Patrick walked over to that mob and was careful not to disturb them. He was always polite and courteous to his customers and people-in-general…so long as they didn't raise trouble. Looking over shoulders and listening, he saw that the center of attention was a little slip of a girl with long pale-blonde hair and large green eyes, her voice small and delicate. 

_____How the Hell a lass like that could live--could even _exist--_in this hard city was beyond him. As he listened to her speak and answer questions, he suspected he knew how. Sometimes, people were crazy and cruel, especially with the changeover of enforcement from a small scattered army of killer bounty hunters to a smaller group of (even more aggressive) crime lords. The girl was just so small and so pretty, so delicately polite, that it would be obscene to even _think_ of her being hurt. 

_____With an effort, Patrick walked away from the group and over to the bar--leaned over to the bar. Carlene came over and leaned forward, listening carefully. In a low and quiet voice, Patrick asked, "Who's the wee lass? Do you know her name? She seems to have the listening ears of all the regular customers…and more."

_____Shrugging blouse-covered shoulders, Carlene said, "Gee… I really don't know, Mr. Patrick. About nine minutes after Maddy drove an injured mechanic to a hospital, the girl came in and walked up. She ordered a glass of water and paid for it… Paid a little too much, I think. Then she offered to sing in thanks. So the house crew set up the stage and let her sing." Her eyes widened. "And… Wow! You should hear her sing. Better yet, you should've seen what happened after she started!" Carlene could barely keep her voice down to a whisper. "There were all kinds of customers coming in--lots of new faces." She looked around, wide-eyed. "They must have heard her from blocks away, her singing carried on the winds or something like that. Before long, this place was full. I really think we should hire her on as one of the regular singers… Unless she buys up all our premium meats!"

_____ "Hmmph…. Hire her on, eh? You really think so?" mused Patrick, looking to the right and over at that group. For some seconds, he listened to the girl's light voice as she answered questions and some people gently laughed and leaned in to better hear her words. They sipped their drinks and kept listening, all of their attention on her. There were easily over two dozen people in that group over there--and it was barely after work-hours. "If she'd be amenable to such an agreement, I'd put her on... Even give her a percentage of the extra profits she brings in. Speaking of new hires, where are my new twin mechanics? Are they back from their little business trip to West-Side Arena?" 

_____Carlene looked downward, the expression on her face frozen for a moment. "The injured mechanic I told you about, the one that Maddy drove to the hospital? Well, he had a message. There was an accident. The twins were working with him and some others in trying to salvage and refurbish something found in the desert. It turned out to be a killing machine with its own mind and…" She looked away, eyes to the right. "They didn't make it, Mr. Patrick."

_____Dumbstruck, Patrick sat down on the nearest bar stool. Was there no end to this stupidity? It was bad enough that mechanics were being kidnapped all over the city and disappearing, ending up who-knows-where in working for the Black Market. He thought that he could look out for this latest pair of mechanics and keep them from disappearing.

_____Now both his latest hires were gone--killed in some stupid Arena accident. Both twins were dead, just like that. Whatever was left of their metal bodies was probably already being taken off and put in shops for re-use. There would be no one to grieve over their dead brains--probably put in bags and sold for to amateur scientists for…"experiments." Zalem was gone; people could do what they wanted to dead brains. How long had the twins been in the city… A few weeks? 

_____He felt sorry for them. Speaking with a voice hoarse with sadness, he said, "There's nothing we can do about that now, can we? Maybe it's fate talking to me… I guess I'll have to learn how to make do without a mechanic." His thick shoulders in white shirt slumped, and he stared at his bar's floor. For the next few minutes, he listened to the new girl talking and entertaining the customers. He didn't want any more of his employees--current or future--ending up missing or dead… No more. 

…

______Clomp-clomp-clomp…! _The Adversary stomped mightily along the street, its metal body still done up in the garish red-and-white paint-job given to it in the underground garage. That massive three-tined claw-hand gleamed with something darker than paint, though. Something that dried and left dark cinnamon-colored stains. 

_____But that stuff wasn't really cinnamon, not by a long shot._ Re-allocating Target Data… Potential targets being scanned, _went its simple electronic mind--an electronic mind now mutilated and half-gone. Some of its AI processors had been yanked out back in that underground garage, and only one-third of them put back. Its simple little killing mind had been butchered, made _deranged_. 

_____No matter: The Adversary's processors were simple and redundant in design. Destroy or take out one of its electronic "brains," and there were two others to back it up--along with simpler processors deep within its mighty armored midsection. It had killer minds to spare within. And it was not as if it had the brains of a genius; it only existed to find and kill particular designated targets. 

_____"Stop that freakin' thing! It killed Kyle!" shouted someone. The upper-half of the Adversary's body rotated to the left and its three optic sensors focused in on the source of the voice: a male cyborg in dark business clothing. And before long, there were dozens of them all around.

_____They had guns, plentiful in quantity and variety. Some guns "fired" magnetically propelled and chemically propelled projectiles of all kinds. Some of them made for ball-shaped, ultra-hot little explosions when the struck. And some of the bullets managed to put tiny dents in the thick armor. All of the shooting made for a lot of light, heat and noise in the afternoon city street…

_____When the smoke cleared, there was a smoking crater in the street where the Adversary once stood--a crater lined with bits of metal. Stepping closer, guns still, the Black Market enforcers warily stepped closer. The crater was actually a hole in the street. As for the bits of metal, they weren't the exploded remains of the metal beast. 

_____They were the distorted bullets fired at the thing. The bullets had--apparently--bounced off of the Adversary's ultra-thick alloy armor. That metal monster was now somewhere in the deep sewers, probably stomping around and already moving to come back to the surface. When it did, there would be more trouble. 


	6. Chapter Six

__

All The Colors of Yesterday 

by Elliot Bowers

…

Chapter 6

…

_____Someone was saying something, but it was hard for Scotch to understand. What were they saying? Why didn't they speak a little louder as so he could understand what the _heck _they were saying? No, wait… Things were getting a little clearer. _Get him off…anesthetics… Damage the brain? _

_____Brain damage? Who's brain? His brain? And why was it that everything so hard to see around here? He had the vague idea that he was on a bed by a window, golden sunset-light coming into this room, but he couldn't be sure. _Considerations… The shock… A loss of comfort to the patient._

_____Through blurry eyes and fuzzy hearing, the dying man saw a blurry figure sort of _floating by _his bed. No, the figure wasn't floating; Scotch was just so dizzy and sedated due to the drugs that he only saw things that way. _Brace yourself. It will hurt for a little while until we can figure out…_ Heck, everything was blurry, smears of light in hazy darkness. The big white-coated man-blur by his bed was doing something attached to something else closer to Scotch. _I'm sorry, but we're trying… Reduce damage to your organs._

_____Pluck! Something was taken out of Scotch's arm. Nothing happened for a little while. Then came the pain--a slow-coming tsunami of intensely insane agony. First, there was a distant feeling of sharpness in his right arm. Then _everything _began to hurt at once. Everything hurt all over--putting him in his own world of hurt! Head to toe, he felt like a bag of smashed meat stuffed with hot spices and sharp little needles! He squirmed and writhed, felt everything feeling bad and rotten! _He screamed_ _because everything…hurt…so…much!_

_____Aiiagh! He shouted, writhing on the bed, feeling as if his skin was about to bust open. He kept screaming until his voice went raw. Then he screamed some more. It began to hurt even worse, if that was possible--as if he was being skewered, salted and slow-roasted over the burning flames of Hell! The screams didn't even express one-one thousandth of the dark and sickening suffering he was feeling. 

__

_____Put him in restraints before he hurts himself, voiced the man-shaped blur in the pain-filled darkness. Scotch barely felt some cool but machine-hard metal fingers put his wrists and ankles in plastic straps. Even as he squirmed and reacted to the pain, he listened to what the important doctor was saying. _This is a bad idea. Tell Karen and that other so-called "doctor" that we're… _Scotch felt himself blacking out as the pain became too much, but he struggled to listen. _We'll have to move to move to doing… Too late._

_____Nope, he couldn't take it any more… There was too much pain and suffering jammed into his head. What little blurriness he did see was becoming covered over with a sparkle-dotted darkness of pain. It was what they called "seeing stars," when pain fills a person's vision with many little dancing dots and sparkles. Given all he was feeling now all over, he wasn't just seeing stars; he was seeing entire constellations, nebulae and whole darned planets. _He felt himself blacking out again, hearing a great roaring fill his ears as he fell into a dream of fire…_

…

______The fires were everywhere he turned. He tried running, jumping and looking for things to stand on. But there was nothing tall enough to stand on. Everything was ablaze, the tall and bright flames flickering up to the infinitely dark sky above. He should have smelled his own flesh burning, but he didn't smell anything. Maybe it was because his nose was burned off, and his sinuses were ruined from the flesh-melting heat. _

_____Then came a cool wind that blew sideways. It was such a blessedly cool breeze, wafting from the right and going across everything. The blessedly cool and dark breeze swept the bright flames away and began sucking them in.. And the breeze was strong enough to pull Scotch right along with it. He was going to wherever the flames were being sucked in.

_____The fire was being sucked right into someone's hands, into a deck of cards… All the flames and all the smoke, all of that was being consumed. With a final slurp of sound, the flames were gone: replaced with the sight of an alley. It was a dark and narrow place here, the walls close in left and right. There was one hanging light-fixture here being the only source of illumination. 

_____The pair of hands that held the cards then began to shuffle. Fwip-fwip-fwip… What the Hell was going on here? And what was that _guy doing here? That old stranger in coveralls was sitting at that table made from junk--except it didn't look so junky now. As usual, he was still rapid-shuffling that deck of odd, stiff green cards. The stranger put some of them on the table, the cards looking tattooed with lighter green lines and dots. _

_____"It's such an old, sad song… But I sang them wrong," said the stranger. "I thought I knew the words… I thought I did!" He tried shuffling his deck of green cards again. Fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip… Grimacing, he tried again when the cards weren't shuffled the way he wanted them.. Fwip-fwip-fwip. "I knew the words, I knew them! But oh, how I sang them wrong! I…sang…them…wrong!_"_ _As Scotch watched and as the stranger shuffled, smoke began to seep out from the cards. Scotch had the idea that the smoke wasn't what it seemed…_

…

______Consciousness returned…_painfully. Squinting open his eyes, Scotch saw that it was morning again. It wasn't that he cared much. Everything still hurt, everything was still blurry and hard to see. But so long as he laid still, the pain was bearable--though it still filled his eyes with sparkles of pain. People were talking.

______…Quality of life,_ declared an elegant woman's voice. The voice must belong to the slender, shorter white blob topped with red. _Consider the costs to his psyche when… _He blacked out again for another second, darn it. Fight it! Fight it! He fought the darkness that threatened to close over him.

_____Quality or not,_ went the other white blob, the one with the male voice. _Will it work? No telling what your plans…_ _Just go with the standard…replacement. He'll recover just fine. Trying to… …Goodness sakes, save the brain! Who cares about quality of life? We'll save…!_

_____The slightly shorter female blob in white made a gesture, blurry smears of motion in Scotch's sickness-confused darkness. _Look at me! Have I done wrong? He and I were friends from a long time ago. Anyway, I'm paying some of my own money and taking charge. If you disagree, then talk to Mister…_

_____Gosh darn it… Not now! Don't black out now! Scotch sucked in some more painful breaths, feeling more pain in his chest and head as he did so. They were talking about him, about what they were going to do to him! He didn't want to become a cyborg, not yet. He liked working with machines but he didn't _want to become one!_

_____Fear-released adrenaline trickled into his bloodstream, clearing the pain a little. Gulping with a dry mouth, he strained to listen. _If that's how you want it! He is your responsibility. I did what I could for him! You do what you want from here on. And that's my last word! _The tall white blob walked down and out of Scotch's sight. 

_____Which him here alone with the woman-sounding white blob… The man-blob's angry steps going away, and the female-blob topped with red came closer to here. _Don't worry. Everything will be better quite soon. You can trust in me, because I am your friend… _Or she said something like that. Soon, there were some other white blobs coming close to here, bringing with them squat gray blurry blobs that made heavy rolling sounds. The strange white blobs all around reached for him with things in their hands. _Trust in me… Please…_

…

__

_____Trust in me… The next time he faded into consciousness, he heard wet cutting and snipping noises. The blobs were doing something to him, but he couldn't be sure what. _Do take note of the metabolic rates, _went the female blob's voice_. We want optimal compatibility…_ They said some other things, but Scotch was more fascinated with what they were doing to his chest. Something inside his chest went _snip, _and then he was unconscious again…

…

______Please…_ He groggily awakened again. All the pain was gone; that was good. But he couldn't feel a darned thing. Scotch tried to use his mouth, but no words were coming out. He tried to reach out with his hands but couldn't feel anything. Ah well, who cares? Ooh, look! Were they reaching for his _head? _Yes, the white blobs had their hands busy above his eyes. He could hear hard wet noises of his own flesh and bone being cut as surgical tools went _snip-snip_ and, finally, _buzz-z-z... _

_____Trust in me. Now the white blobs were bringing down something that made a lot of noise! It made a high-pitched buzzing sound, something spinning ridiculously fast. When it came down between his eyes, everything became extra blurry as wet stuff began to cover his eyes. _As the white blobs began doing things to his face, he again sank into unconsciousness…_

…

______Singing… It was such sad and beautiful singing…._ Scotch yawned and sat up in the warm room--the dim rich orange of sunlight shining through the window. It took a few seconds, but his eyesight cleared up. He rubbed his face--the skin of his palms rubbing somewhat-numb cheeks, and then he looked around when the singing stopped. 

_____It was a medical clinic room… No, it was too expensive-looking for that. This must be a hospital room--a pretty expensive-looking one, too. He was in a bed with white sheets and gray cloth blanket, the walls of the room looking well-maintained. There were some pictures on the wall and a small nightstand to the right of this bed--a book set beneath an incandescent lamp. But the lamp was off, as were the overhead lights. The only light that came in was the light through the window behind this bed. 

_____"Well! Someone has certainly taken his time in coming back!" went the female blob's voice. Except, this time, Scotch's eyesight was sharp enough to see that she wasn't just a white blob topped with fluffy red. The one he had previously seen as the woman-blob turned out to be a young-looking, red-haired doctor in lab-coat and slacks, sitting in a chair right of this bed. Sitting in the doctor's lap was a thin and petite girl in blue shorts and white tee-shirt, her glowingly pale-blonde hair combed straight back. She wore a scarf around her neck--a strip of cloth velvet and blood-red in color. The girl was very pretty, like a living doll. But her crimson scarf contrasted with the paleness of her skin, making her seem pallid. 

_____He'd never seen the girl before, but the red-haired doctor herself was familiar… Then he remembered. "Dr. Sera!" he exclaimed, leaning forward. "Hee-hee-hee! Of all the people I'd expect to find. It's good to see you after all of these years and years. So where have you been all of this time? Heh, this city is a pretty darned big place. How'd you find me in all of this?" He looked down at his normal-looking hands atop the blanket. "Too bad we didn't meet up earlier. My brother's dead, so are two of my best friends--Kyrie and Harrah. Just too bad… Too bad…" His words were just tumbling out, trying to say so much in a little time. 

_____"Whatever do you mean, 'didn't meet up earlier?" asked Dr. Sera aloud, her voice rising. "Why, I've been with you all along. You just didn't recognize me!" She smiled. "Hmm… Perhaps I should be more condescending to your perspective, as anonymity was my intent…" 

_____"What the…? What do you mean by that?" asked Scotch. He didn't know _what_ Dr. Sera was talking about. How could she have been around? He would have recognized her elegant good looks and intelligent personality right away. Dr. Sera was one of the most mechanically and technologically intelligent people he ever knew… He leaned forward in the bed. "Wait a second. You mean you were in disguise?"

_____"Certainly. You knew me in my disguised form." She tilted her head to the left, "You called me 'Harrah…'" Then she tilted her head to the right. "And you called me 'Kyrie.'" A shake of her head… "_Everybody_ called me 'Harrah' and 'Kyrie.' It was a little bit confusing at first, but I became quite used to it after a time. It was a rather intriguing and interesting experience, being two people at once… But after the accident at the Arena, I simply had to become myself again--because my dual bodies were just too extensively damaged to be repaired by the limited expertise of the local populace… Good thing, because I came back to myself in time to give you a custom-made body to preserve your quality of life--the kind of body I now have as well."

_____"Huh?" went Scotch. He looked at his hands, which looked fine. "What's that supposed to mean? I've still got my flesh body. I'm still…human…" But then he began to notice some things, staring at and feeling his hands. The little scars and calluses he'd gotten over the years from working with tools and engines, they were gone. And the skin felt just a little less sensitive to touch. He pressed his fingers to his cheeks, which felt a little stiffer than usual. It felt like skin, but…

_____"Amazing, isn't it?" she said, stroking the petite girl's silken hair. The girl sighed and leaned her head on Dr. Sera's left shoulder. She even sighed beautifully, musically. "You will note that your body looks and feels almost totally like the original. Flesh, eyes, hair… Except it isn't. You're a cyborg now, as am I. The muscle-tissue is myogel, and the skin is an elastic polymer--synthetic flesh over titanium bones. I call such a body…a synth-flesh type. Both you and I now have the prototypes." 

_____Now Scotch was feeling especially confused. Cyborg bodies that looked real? The doctor being two people at once? "Scotch, I can read the discombobulation on your rather sharp features. Now let me explain. This will take some time, and I suspect that it will put dear little Aikasa here to sleep…" Indeed, the pale-haired girl's large green eyes were already half-closed. "Now pay attention. My explanation will be lengthy, but the details are important in eliminating your confusion. It began, perhaps, eighteen years ago. I was living a rather shameful existence…"

…

2.

…

_____Here on the farm, Dr. Sera helpedyet another farmer, small parts of his metal body having been damaged.. "Aw, gee! Feels an awful _lot _better, Doc!" said the male cyborg in farmer's coveralls, wriggling his freshly cleaned metal hands. He was sitting atop the raised work-table--miscellaneous medial equipment along the left and right walls. This was the farm's medical clinic, equipped to handle cyborgs and fleshies both--though somewhat better equipped to deal with cyborgs. Because of all the airborne desert grit, miscellaneous agricultural chemicals and all the extra water that cyborg-farmers worked with, cyborg bodies tended to malfunction slightly more often than those of city dwellers. 

_____"You will be sure to wear gloves over your hands when you work with dirty water now… Right, Jeremiah?" she asked, her right hand on the farmer's solid left shoulder. "I know, gloves are thick and cumbersome things. Still, you must take the necessary workplace precautions. An ancient saying goes, 'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.' Preventative medicine _is_ effective."

_____"Hmmph! Good point, Doctor Sera," responded the cyborg. He, Jeremiah, here had been refitting pipes deep in the workings of the farm's water reprocessing facility, his metal hands constantly exposed to untreated water for over an hour. The gritty and impure water worked its way into the many dozens of fine joints in his hands, making them less articulate. This farmer had been so concerned with his work that he cared more about getting the job done than putting on a pair of gloves.

_____All the same, Jeremiah should have taken better care of his body's parts. This was more true because of the lower availability of spare cyborg-parts. Out here on the farm, manufactured supplies--like electromechanical body parts--had to be shipped in from the city. Dr. Sera learned to get by with what was available, building on her knowledge of human and cyborg physiology and technology--a combination of book-knowledge and experience. 

_____By the time he was done performing maintenance on the pipes and such, the electromechanical workings of his wet and dirty hands became stiff and unworkable. He could clench and unclench his hands, but wriggling his fingers or pressing buttons on machinery consoles was difficult and slow to do. Some of his co-workers worried that Jeremiah would have to get his hands replaced--hard to do since parts were hard to come boy. 

_____No problem. Dr. Sera knew what to do. She had spent an hour and a half in removing the contaminant. Wearing goggles and gloves, working under a bright light, the intelligent and beautiful doctor used high-velocity sprays of silicon oil to remove the contaminants from Jeremiah's hands. She could have just given him a bucket of solvent and let him soak his hands for half the night, which would have been just as effective. Yet farmers needed their relaxation and sleep-time.

_____"Should this happen again," began Dr. Sera, "I _will _give you a bucket of an especially smelly solvent solution to soak your hands in and have you _sit_ in here until your hands work again. Again, _please_ wear your protective work-gear when doing such work… And in the meantime, I'll be sure to put in a request for more appropriate hands to be shipped here. You're done. Remember what I said."

_____"Hey! Thanks, Doc!" said the farmer, getting off the worktable. "Thanks an awful lot! Wear my gloves… Yeah, I'll have to remember," he said. Jeremiah's words weren't just idle talk. He would be more careful in the future; he didn't want his hands ruined again! 

_____When Jeremiah was gone, walking out of this room and along the exit hall out of this small farm building, Dr. Sera walked over to the sink. She stripped off the surgical gloves and carefully laid them on the tray next to the sink--washed her hands with medical-smelling soap and warm water. The faucet off, she looked at her reflection in the mirror. 

_____Dr. Sera was a thin, doe-eyed woman in her late twenties--her skin perhaps too pale from being indoors too long. Though such a lithe woman, her hair was thick and full-bodied, long red tresses of curly hair. She wore her thick red hair with the sides pinned back, drawn away from her fine-featured face. It made her look more mature than she really was… The few friends she had, the assistant doctor and the nurses, said that it was a real shame that a girl as pretty as her didn't go out more. Have a little more fun. Even doctors needed time off to heal!

_____Fun? Dr. Sera stared into her own reflection, into her own eyes. Oh, she had her own kind of fun. In the city, Dr. Sera's kind of fun would have led to her being chased down by bounty hunters. Then they would take her head and turned it in for cash. Out here, there were just seven such "hunters"--more like bodyguards because they took in regular wages from Mr. Lionel for maintaining farm security. But they didn't know about Dr. Sera's illegal obsession, or ignored it.

_____To her, the kind of fun she had was better than drugs. It was even better than love. What Dr. Sera did in her private workshop, it felt better and intensely sweeter than anything else she had tried. A thrill rushed through her body at just the thought of it. The day was almost over, and she almost couldn't wait. The thought of her secret and private pleasure was enough to get her through the half hour of regular work-time she had left.

_____In the meantime, she sat down and read through printed-out articles on electromechanical engineering--articles printed up from a database in the city. It would seem intensely technical and boring to most. Dr. Sera was not like most people. She loved this material, this knowledge of small parts working in an orderly manner. It was related to the kind of pleasure she had.

_____When the work day was finally over, and Dr. Sera said her goodbyes to the other doctor and the nurses at the clinic. She walked along the slightly dusty road, shrubs and grasses planted along the sides. She waved waving to farmers and workers on her way back to her own two-story house. Yes, she was almost there. Her fists clenched in anticipation as she approached her front door--unlocked it with her key. 

…

_____She didn't bother to change out of the clothes she wore at the clinic--the blouse, slacks and long labcoat. No, she wore this sort of thing when she partook in the kind of pleasure she was going to have--and had every evening to herself. The first floor of her large "house" was actually a studio-apartment setup, where minor experiments and projects were set up on tables. There was a bookshelf and some armchairs along a wall, but most of the area was occupied with work tables and machinery throughout the rest of the floor space. 

_____On the first floor, instead of going to one of those tables or sitting down in that armchair, Dr. Sera first made sure that all of her doors were locked and that most of the lights were out. She walked towards one of the brick walls and pressed a sonic remote-device to a certain brick. Something clicked, and she was able to slide aside what was actually a phony section of wall. Smiling, she stepped into a dark space--closing the phony section of wall behind her.

_____Only when she was inside did the lights come on in her secret space. This hidden workshop was only slightly wider than a closet, yet it was as long as the house and as high as the first floor. She had raised stools set in front of three work-tables, each table with a lamp over it. There were also lights along the wall to display what this private workshop was all about.

_____Guns…. Lots of guns. This place was all about guns. Wall to wall, mounted and arranged, there were all kinds of such projectile-firing weapons. Rifles, pistols, submachine guns, every category of portable projectile armament was here. All of them worked and had ammunition. And all of them were carefully and sweetly crafted by Dr. Sera's pleasure-driven fingers. 

_____She _loved_ guns--holding them, using them, and making them… _Especially _making them. There was something intensely wonderful about crafting the mechanisms and the bullets, making them able to quickly glide through long barrels to shoot out and destroy things from a distance. They were so powerful, so wonderful… She liked to touch guns, to hold guns, to fire them! But that was only the culmination of a more delicious ride--that of making them. 

_____One such project was already underway. Dr. Sera took up a toolkit and sat down at one of the work-tables--one with parts all over it. Following schematics she had drawn by hand on grid-paper, she slowly and carefully fit pieces and parts together. She measured slides and joints, then soldered them together. Not all of the parts were whole. These came from parts smuggled in on the heavy freight trains from the city. She used them to make her own creations, sometimes from components she had to craft herself. 

_____There were no visible clocks in this place, and there were no windows. Also, the air ventilation was minimal. The close air was soon full of thick metal smell of metal-on-metal and getting warm. Lips slightly parted, Dr. Sera's face and neck were sheened wet with perspiration, her fingers working the tools that made this gun. Most of her body was stiff and still as her shoulders and arms worked, hands and fingers moving. 

_____Her view of reality became restricted to just this and this alone. A steady river of pleasure was flooding her mind, making her feel good as she steadily made the gun. Parts went here and components went there. Measure this carefully and put that in carefully. Dozens of parts made bigger parts… Onward and upward. 

______Bz-z-z-zt! _A small buzzer in here went off, indicating to Dr. Sera that it was nearing the middle of the night. She stopped working, her latest masterpiece nearly completed. It was going to be her most awesome project yet. It would not make a great deal of noise or make for much recoil, but the power and efficacy of this thing was to be nightmarish. Anyone or anything hit by the particle blast would face a horrible and graphic destruction that would make people run. Dr. Sera was almost afraid to complete it. 

_____But there was no going back. She had to complete it. Every one of her projects were, subconsciously, leading up to this terrible weapon. And if she stopped, she would simply come right back to making it. Better to finish it now than in some unknown time in the future… The future. Funny how she should think of that, working with this gun. It was time for her to get out of here and upstairs. She would take a long and hot shower, put on a slight nightgown, then go to bed--feeling well-satisfied. 

…

3.

…

_____ _Six nights later…_her latest labor of dark love was done. She was finally able to go out to the desert and test her compact gun--which she now carried inside a small and insulated case. Most all of the farm's buildings were shut down for the night, setting the compound in gloom, but the moonlight above made for light enough to see. She walked beyond the block of buildings where the workers and farmers lived, made her way along the road that went between the farm fields themselves--fields of tall food plants to the left and right. 

_____The crops were so high that they made for dense forests of amber to the left and right. So tall, in fact, that no one could see past them unless they were sitting in a combine harvester or in a truck. They were mutant strains of rice and wheat, able to grow tall and fast in the desert heat. Whoever engineered the plants all of those centuries ago must have had access to excellent technologies--technologies which were probably obliterated and forgotten since the disasters…and the War. 

_____"_Haa-haa-haa…!_" Someone laughed ridiculously loudly, braying like an animal. _Thump! _"That _hurt!_" went the man's voice in the field. "Do it again!" _Thump!_ "Ooh, yes! Hit me harder, baby! This moonshine makes the _hurt _feel good!" _Thump! Thump-p-p…! Thump-p-p!_

_____Resuming her walk and clutching her case, Dr. Sera shook her head. Some farmers were in the fields, getting drunk off of something they brewed themselves. Mr. Lionel frowned on farmers staying up too far after dark and drinking to excess, but what could he do? Dr. Sera didn't like to drink; drinking made her want to hurt people. _Thump… Thump… Thump…_

_____With the sounds of blows and laughter behind her, walking along the road, she finally came to the edge of the farm itself. There was a sharp border between where the farm fields ended and where the desert wasteland began--right here. The dusty road cutting between the crop-fields stopped at a sharp edge and so did the square crops. Beyond this edge was a thin strip of browned earth that met the hard-pan ground of the desert itself. The cool moon overhead shone down from a huge sky, the wide-open panorama of land beyond. 

_____Out here, there was a vast and open wasteland flatness--slightly rolling brown rises in the far-off distance. The flatness wasn't empty; there were some shells of burnt-out bandit vehicles and unworkable chunks of alloyed junk that were so tough that they couldn't be recycled and re-worked at all. There was one piece of large junk in particular that she was interested in…

_____A minute or so of walking brought her out to a long and blackened vehicular shell--the windows busted out and the tires gone. Yes, this would be an excellent target to test her weapon. Kneeling, her lab-coat flapping around her in a sudden breeze, she opened up the case she had been carrying--lifted out the compact weapon that was inside.

_____Her newly created weapon resembled a very simple, very small, and very dark pistol--small enough to be covered up by an average man's hand. All over, the little thing was sheer black and compact, able to be held in one hand. It was so simple in design that it looked as if most of the little gun's body was made from a single chunk of metal--even the trigger guard being square. Though the dark pistol was very small and toylike, it weighed six pounds.

_____Dr. Sera exercised regularly, but she did not eat as often as she should--making her a rather slight woman--her thin arms straining a little to hold up the weapon at arm's length. It felt good and solid, holding the compact little gun. This was months of work built on years of experience… And now she would fire it. 

_____There was a sheen of perspiration on her forehead, reflecting moonlight, as she took aim at the vehicle. It didn't matter where she aimed or what object she aimed at; the results would always be the same. Holding her breath, she sque-e-ezed the trigger… 

__

_____Fa-woosh… A deep orange flash of heat and light flared across the space between the gun and the burnt-out vehicle. The results were horrible and frightening, yet amazing to watch. An eerie and glowing orange haze briefly washed over the junked vehicle, consumed it. Then the haze began to fade. 

_____Once the orange haze faded, Dr. Sera could see that the entire bus had disappeared--just faded out of existence. There seemed to be nothing left of the big junked vehicle, not even a pile of rust. Other than a slightly odd smell of burning in the air, there was no sign of the piece of junk ever having existed. 

_____This gun, it worked! It could make things…_disappear... _Nothing material in this universe could stop its concentrated blast of wrong-spinning tachyons. And once the flashing blast struck a material object, it would soon cease to exist… Nothing could stop its shot: not armor, not walls, nothing.

_____She stared at the dark little weapon, a weapon that was heavier than it was big. If this heavy little gun fell into the hands of someone with her knowledge, someone unscrupulous, then there would be more of them made. No one would be safe. A half-dozen of these dark pistols in the hands of bandits, and whole cities could soon cease to exist. Buildings, factories, vehicles, and people… They could be dissolved and destroyed with just shots from this. And because the gun's microfusion energy supply could last as long as a star, there would be no end to the obliteration. 

_____It would be the end of the world all over again, like what happened during the disasters and the War. Except, this time, there would be nothing to rebuild this world from. It would be all her fault… All her fault. Just because she had a sort of secret mental sickness that made her like guns more than she liked men or other women. Now, her private and secret pleasure had culminated in the creation of _this_.

_____Holding the heavy little thing in her hands, she felt tears coming to her eyes. She didn't want to destroy this world! So long as her brain held the knowledge to make the weapon and so long as she liked guns the way she did, there was always the possibility that this dark gun could be made again…and again…

_____No! She went to her knees on the hard desert grit. Tears were coming down her cheeks now, and her breath was coming in shaky little gasps. She almost thought of putting the dark gun to her own head and destroying herself. It would only hurt for a second, and then she'd be dead. But… What about her hidden workshop? And her notes? And all the other weapon prototypes? And the other things she had created? If she didn't exist anymore, then… So she put the dark pistol to her head. 

_____She didn't have the courage to kill herself. She didn't want to die… Wiping her tears, she quickly put the compact gun back in the case and closed it. She stood up and made quick strides back towards the farm. In doing so, she passed through the smelly space where the burnt-out bus had once been--the hard dry ground slightly softer where it had been. When she returned to the farm, she knew what she had to do.

…

_____Most all of the lights in her building were on, blazing in the night through the uncurtained windows of the first floor. She took folders of loose-leaf paper out of her secret workshop and brought them out to the main cyborg workshop area, all the notes on projectile and energy weaponry she had written over the years. There was a furnace built against a wall for super-heating metals. The paper didn't stand a chance. All the notes? Yes, they were all done. She tossed in the dark pistol. An hour in the furnace, and its inner workings would be fused together--the power supply rendered useless. 

_____Then she went to a sheet-covered table and pulled off what was hidden beneath. There was a table. Atop were two sleek cyborg female bodies of average height. The top-parts to the bald heads were off, the hair sets and tops set between the bodies. Their faces vaguely resembled her own…

_____Dr. Sera was saving these bodies for something special. One day, she was hoping her knowledge of artificial minds would be enough to duplicate the bio-chip technology that went into the heads of Zalemites. But all she was able to make was a simple and brutish electronic brain--set into ROM cards. She didn't want brutish and murderous minds going into such beautiful bodies with pretty faces and hair. So until she could create an electronic brain suitable, she would hold off on completing them. 

_____In the meanwhile, she had put simple electronic minds in various other creations. She made simple androids able to perform simple tasks and some (less-successful) floor-cleaning robot-pets. One such simple computer-brain even went into a metal monster which she activated just once and never turned on again--the electromechanical monster now built into a wire-closet. Her secretly made robots were capable of understanding basic commands, and their memories were computer-perfect. Yet, there was something missing… They lacked personality. 

_____Simple tasks… Now she knew what she would do. Dr. Sera went into her secret workshop and opened a closet. There was a simple metal android--resembling a man made from cubes of metal. She turned on its switch. "Follow me," she said.

_____The simple robot did as it was told, using its somewhat stiff walk to following Dr. Sera. It stood perfectly still when its chest-panel was opened--wires connecting it to a computer. Instructions flooded its electronic mind--entire volumes of knowledge about cyborg technology and human physiology--especially the human brain. It now knew how to remove a human brain, perfectly bisect the brain in half between the left and right hemispheres, then put the resulting halves through the chemical conversion processes that made them compatible with cyborg bodies.

_____With the robot standing by and the doors locked, Dr. Sera laid down atop a work-table. She had drank something that was already putting her to sleep. This way, she wouldn't be conscious when the robot systematically cut away her head and surgically removed her brain… 

…

_____When the next morning came, bright sunlight spilling through the window, two young-looking female cyborgs were sitting in the upstairs living-space of this building--the very same bodies that Dr. Sera had not completed, now completed. Both were vaguely athletic in appearance, their metal bodies resembling form-fitting armor over sleek physiques. Their faces were the same, and so did their hair: long dark hair that flowed to hip-length. Not only were they physically similar, but these cyborg twins also shared the same mind.

_____Or rather, _halves_ of the same mind. It was an odd and somewhat disconnected feeling… Each "twin" knew that the other was thinking the same way. "Hello, other-me," said the cyborg-girl at the left side of the table. "It looks like my plan was a success, right?"

_____"Yes, my plan worked," answered the one on the right side of the table, a smile on her equally pretty face. "If it hadn't, then we wouldn't be alive right now, would we?" Her dark eyes staring, she added, "Even better, I guess I forgot how to make _that_ gun, huh?" 

_____"Yeah, I only remember half of how I made it. Funny, I remember everything else… Hmm…" answered the twin at the left side of the table. She rattled her solid fingertips atop the table. "You know what? I can't just walk around calling you 'other-me.' Besides, I'm really you and you're really me at the same time. I think you should have a name."

_____"Hmm… Hey! How about 'Kyrie?' It's a pretty name… I always wanted a pretty name," she said. "And didn't I want the other-me to be named 'Hari' or something…? Harri? Hmmph… Eww! That's a boy's name! Never mind!" She put on an expression of disgust…before another smile lit up her face. "How about…'Harrah?'"

_____"Yeah! Harrah and Kyrie!" answered the other twin, the one now who would call herself _Harrah_. "When everybody else on this farm wakes up, I suppose I… No, _we_ will have to explain to someone smart what happened to me--what I did to myself."

_____"Probably, only the people at the medical clinic would understand," answered Kyrie. "I mean… Like, _wow!_ Has _anyone_ ever done this before? People have been taking whole brains out and putting them into cyborg-bodies… People have copied brains and put them on bio-chips…"

_____"…But no one ever divided their own brain into two hemispheres and put them in two separate bodies," finished Harrah. "We _do_ have some computer-circuitry in our heads to make up for missing motor-function knowledge and stuff, but we're both… Ha-ha…! We're both _half-wits!_"

_____"Ha-ha-ha…! Hey there, half-wit!" laughed Kyrie. "I guess we'll have to put our _heads together_ on that one. Oops, too late for that! Now hush up, _half-wit. _I'm the smart one!"

_____"No… _I'm _the smart one!" responded Harrah. "Wait a second… I'm the pretty one, too… Even if you do have the same looks I do!" From then on, they were making horrible jokes like that up until they walked over to the clinic and told the assistant doctor and the nurses what had happened. 

…

_____To the medical personnel, it was horrible and frightful, almost unbelievable. But sonic resonance scanning of their heads verified what the twins had told them. Indeed, their brains--their minds--were two halves of the same brain, augmented with some computer-chips. And the medical personnel swore to never tell anyone. They then built the lie that Kyrie and Harrah were twin daughters sent by Dr. Sera--who had escaped to the city with a bandit boyfriend. 

_____Dr. Sera had _children_? _Twin daughters_?No one believed them at first, of course. But the information and answers they gave about their "mother" proved their story enough. And so it came to be. Harrah and Kyrie were daughters of the runaway doctor. They were living a lie, but loving it…

…

4.

…

_____"…Until now, " finished Dr. Sera. She kissed the top of the girl's head. The little girl in the doctor's lap remained awake after all, a half-empty glass of water in her small hands. She had also drank at least half a dozen glasses of water since Dr. Sera began talking. Geez, the kid must have a gallon-capacity bladder.

_____By now, the sun had set--many city lights outside. The hospital room was now illuminated with fluorescent lighting set in the ceiling. Normally, florescent light-tubes made for harsh lighting. But this lighting was softened somehow, making patients more comfortable. 

_____"Now here I am, whole again," continued the doctor. "I have odd dreams every so often and the occasional…other problem, but I remember almost everything before I divided myself, unfortunately. Everything except the knowledge of _that_ gun." Her eyes took on a sad and far-off kind of look for a while. And for a few almost-silent seconds, there was just the sound of distant machinery whirring elsewhere in the building--machines in other rooms and in the basement. "Well!" she finally said, breaking the silence. "So tell me, what do you plan on doing now?"

_____Just then, Aikasa frowned and eased herself out of Dr. Sera's lap--went to the water pitcher by Scotch's bed. She glanced at him, watching for harsh words, then walked with it out of the room. Scotch watched the girl leave the room, wondering what was wrong with her. Soon, there was the sound of water in the hall, water flowing into the pitcher. 

____"I uh… Guess I'll have to find another job or something. I _really_ don't want to go back to that Arena. They work with some dangerous stuff there, and accidents happen. Maybe I'll see if I can get some odd jobs or something…" He lowered his voice. "_By the way, is something…wrong with her_?_"_

_____"Wrong with…? Oh!" said Dr. Sera, maybe a bit too loudly. "I'll let her explain. We all have our faults. No one I know is perfect. We all have our own peculiarities and secrets nowadays. However, in Aikasa's case, she has been especially secretive to the point where it leads to introversion. A shame, since she has such a beautiful voice. Speaking of peculiarities, I really should tell you about the latter--certain aspects of having a synth-flesh type body."

_____Walking quietly, Aikasa came back into the room, cradling the pitcher in her right arm and yet another glass of water in her left hand. She eased the pitcher back onto the stand next to Scotch's bed, then stood near the wall and continued to drink water. Scotch also noticed that the girl's scarf had a damp look to it.

_____Dr. Sera began speaking in a lecturing, instructional tone. "As you have noticed, the body you have now has a very close resemblance to your original. The phenotypes… The exterior anatomy is all in place. However, it is _not_ your original body. It is synthetic. You are now just as much a cyborg as any of the metal-bodied denizens of the land--if not more so. Everything but your brain has been replaced with synthetic materials, ranging from the resilience of your myogel muscle tissue and synthetic skin…to the rigidity of your titanium-alloy skeleton. _Endo_-skeleton rather than _exo_-skeleton.

_____"That said, there are certain things to be aware of. Your muscular strength is now six times beyond fleshie average, your agility is three times human normal, and your nutritional needs are radically reduced. Your body and brain have different energy supplies: While your body's systems derive energy from dual microfusion battery packs in your midsection, your brain obtains nutrition from a streamlined version of standard artificial organs. 

_____"So yes, you _are_ a cyborg. Yet you are not close to having the strength of a metal-type cyborg. Because the onus of your body's structural integrity is inside, you cannot take the physical damage of a metal-type. Also, your internal supply of nanobots is not as plentiful nor as effective. What I am saying is this: Avoid getting hurt, and avoid fights. It takes longer for you to recover from damage. 

_____"You may go back to your job…after a period of initial readjustment to your body's properties. Just be aware of your new medical condition. And if you have any questions, you can come back to this building. Now if you'll excuse me…" She got up from the chair and turned to walk out of this hospital room.

_____"Huh? Wa'… Wait a second!" blurted Scotch, throwing off his sheets. Luckily, he was fully dressed in coveralls and shirt--with fresh socks as well. They had even washed his clothes and dressed him as soon as they had replaced his body. He tried to make a dash for the doorway …and tripped over his own two feet. Dang, Dr. Sera was right: his body _was_ different, moved differently. 

_____The beautiful red-haired doctor again turned to face her latest patient and long-time friend. "Hmm? You really should give yourself some time to allow your brain's motor cortex to adjust to your new body… What is it, Scotch?"

_____Shakily standing up again, Scotch asked, "You're just gonna _leave?_ After all this? Me and my brother… We missed you, Doc! You did so much for the farm and everyone, did so many amazing things with machines and helped so may cyborgs." He put his hands in his pockets and looked down at the floor. "You even saved my life. Now you're going away again? I don't know if I can make it alone."

_____ She walked back into the room and stepped closer. Her right hand cradled a side of Scotch's face, a palm on one of his cheeks. "You poor man… I know it's going to be hard, as you have always had your big brother looking out for you. But you're going to have to learn how to stand on your own, to get started in the city. " She lowered her hand away from Scotch's cheek, gestured to Aikasa. "You wouldn't guess it, but Aikasa has learned to make it on her own: no parents or siblings to help her. She earns money singing, and now she lives in her own apartment. Worse yet, her medical condition makes her more vulnerable to certain physical hardships than most fleshies. So if Aikasa found strength enough to make it on her own, then so can you. Good luck, Scotch. We'll meet again…in one form or another. Now I must tend to other patients--new cyborgs, metal-types. By the way, the Arena picked up your bill. You can stay here for one more night." 

_____Then Dr. Sera was gone. He watched her quickly step out of the room and turn right, going along the hall. Was he in love? No, it was something else… To him, Dr. Sera was the most amazing woman, the most amazing person, he'd ever known. She was technologically and medically brilliant, yet she had the personality of a kind mother and caring friend--all that, and had that kind of elegant beauty that made a person stare. Now she was walking away.

_____"I like her," said a light and beautiful voice. Scotch turned to look at the girl in blouse and shorts, her back to the wall. It was Aikasa's voice. "Dr. Sera is certainly one of the most admirable people in this city, the entire city," she added. 

_____Scotch's attention was again drawn to the girl's red scarf. "Yeah, she is. You know what? Back on the farm, she had a kind of following with the kids. The adults, too. There were men all over the place who wanted her… _Really_ wanted her, if you know what I mean. Some of the women wanted her, too. But she never seem interested in that sort of thing. Guess I know why, now. That gun-fetish… Hey, and what did she mean by that, your medial condition? Are you sick or something?"

_____This made Aikasa's green eyes open wider, the sound of a gasp coming from her open lips. A deep red blush filled her pale cheeks, a blush almost as red as her scarf. "Well, I…" Her eyes darted left and right as she seemed to be looking for an answer. Then came a look of resolution as she stood up, no longer resting her back against the wall. Holding her glass of water in both hands and looking into it, she whispered to herself, "_I'm not going to be ashamed of what I am…_"

_____Curious as to what she was talking about, Scotch watched as Aikasa went over to the night stand and put the glass of water next to the pitcher. She turned to face him, took some steps closer. With careful fingers, she loosened her scarf and brushed back some lengths of her hair with her small fingers--getting it out of the way. She then held her breath, tilted back her head to arch her neck, and lowered the scarf.

_____Scotch didn't notice anything peculiar at first… Then he did. Aikasa had a series of thin slits in the sides of her neck--three on the left and three on the right. There were networks of red and blue capillaries visible just beneath her skin, going to and from the slits. Yet there was no blood, though there was some water around the slits. Water…

_____ Aikasa quickly bowed her head and re-tied her scarf. "They are gills, allowing those like me to thrive in both freshwater and saltwater environments, however contaminated. Also, I do not have individual toes. And that is _all_ that is wrong with me. I'm normal in every other way, as normal as everyone else!" she said, her voice rising. "I'm not a freak!" 

_____ "Please… Calm down, Aikasa," said Scotch, seeing the hurt in the girl's eyes. With all of the pollutants and contaminants in the air, water and even the heavily processed food, mutations were as common as the flu. There were radical cases in which people were born as drooling, psychotic _monsters_ with inhuman strength. But some mutations were slight and benign, like having purple hair or gold-colored eyes. Scotch actually knew a rather pretty city girl with that exact combination of odd-colored hair and eyes. Some fleshies tended to stay away from them, fearing that they would somehow contract the same genetic defects or have it transmitted to their unborn children. They're _mutants…_

_____"Dr. Sera said I'm not supposed to be ashamed, but it's so _hard!_" she said. "I'm really lucky she made this scarf for me…a really, _really _long time ago. It lets me keep my gills moist and live with normal people. But all the time, I worry about somebody taking my scarf, pointing me out and shouting, '_Mutant!' _Like I'm something _disgusting_ that has to be killed and thrown back into the sewers." Aikasa clenched her hands and stomped her left foot. "I _hated_ it down there!_"_

_____"The…sewers?" asked Scotch. "No… No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't ask. My brother and I had it tough for a while, too. And let me tell you, we've done some pretty nasty things to get by. Out in the desert, I mean." 

_____"Ooh… The desert," responded Aikasa, gently rubbing a side of her scarf-covered neck. She was no doubt imagining all of those long and dry landscapes, the burning sun overhead. Because of her need for affinity to plenty of water, even thinking about that wide-open wasteland was uncomfortable and a little frightening. 

_____"But I'm not going back out there for a long while!" he said. "Nah… I guess I'm going to stay in the city. Find some jobs here and there, try to keep paying for the apartment my brother and me shared. Gonna miss him, though…."

_____Just then, a bald man in a tan-colored business slacks and jacket stepped into the doorway--his dark sunglasses glinting as he grinned. Aikasa turned to look. "Oh, it's Mr. Janx! He's my talent agent. Looks like I have to go earn some money for myself now," she said. "Sorry. I guess this is bye-bye for now, Scotch. Dr. Sera is special to both of us now, huh?"

_____Scotch nodded as he watched Aikasa leave with the quiet man she called Mr. Janx. Aikasa had such a wonderful voice. She must make a great deal of money from singing at restaurants and pubs. No wonder she had a talent agent, helping to manage what could probably become a busy career. As she and Mr. Janx also went away, he was left alone in here. It looked like he was going to have to get on out of here too, get back to his own life in the city. But there was nothing that could be done now; most all the repair businesses in the city were closed by now…

…

5.

… 

_____"Mr. Scotch?" came the woman's call from afar. Scotch suddenly sat up in the bed, eyes wide. He saw a nurse in a surprisingly traditional uniform. It seemed that businesses run by the Black Market were restoring ancient styles of clothing in some places. The nurse had a rolling cart with her--some kind of sweet-looking red juice in a large cup and a few bars of enriched chocolate on a plate. It was a cyborg's breakfast: full of glucose. She rolled the cart next to Scotch's bed.

_____He took up the glass of juice and began to drink. Because his tongue was synthetic, the juice tasted a bit watery. The chocolate bar wasn't as tasty as he expected it to be for the same reason. But he found himself craving the stuff anyway. 

_____"It's coming close to the afternoon," said the nurse, nodding towards the window behind Scotch's head. Outside was a fifth-story view of this blocky industrial city under a clouded sky, the gray-white light coming in through the window. "We were worried if we weren't able to rouse you. Your attending physician instructed us to keep close watch on you overnight." She leaned closer, squinted a little. "She said that you have a new type of cyborg body? Synthetic flesh? Gosh, you don't _look _like a cyborg. Maybe I should have this metal body of mine replaced with the kind Dr. Sera makes. A body that looked like my original one, of course. How do you feel?"

_____"I feel… I feel… _Wow!_" After having eaten and drank that meal, he felt_ great. _His chemically converted cyborg-brain had just received a boost of all the fuels it needed to work for a while. And his body didn't even need food. After all, his insides were powered by two nuclear batteries. "You know what? Nurse, I'm going to get started in my life again!" 

_____He climbed out of bed and put back on his work-shoes. Not that he ever cared that much about it before, but his feet had no smell. And he also felt a little dry all over. After all, his skin was synthetic. He wouldn't sweat anymore, probably wouldn't need to use a toilet anymore, either. For some reason, this made him feel less than human.

_____Ah well! At least he was still alive. "Nurse, could you tell Dr. Sera thanks? Thanks for the free body and all? I know the West-Side Arena picked up the bill, but thank her anyway. Well, unless you've got anything else to tell me, I'll see ya!" He gave a wave to the nurse and went for the door, a light carelessness in his step. 

…

_____On the sidewalk at the hospital entrance, Scotch looked at the city. It really was around noon-time. The machine-buildings were humming and thrumming, while heavy trucks drove by on the streets. Most people were already at work. The only city dwellers around were some taxi drivers and truck drivers at open cafes. There were some men and women in dark business-clothes at that sidewalk café across the street and sitting beneath big umbrellas, but that sort of people were everywhere. Apparently, those were executives and enforcers of the Black Market. With Zalem's control gone, the once-underground criminal economy had surfaced and was now visibly pervasive.

_____Scotch, however, had no particular desire to have a conversation with members of the Black Market just yet. He had a small pouch of chips in his pocket, and maybe he would hire himself a taxi to get back to his apartment. He would just turn to the left like this, put his hands in his big coverall pockets like _so_, and _calmly…walk…away…_

_____Then he heard a whole gaggle of hard-soled footsteps behind him, occasionally interrupted by the sound of a heavy truck. There was no one else on this sidewalk, so that particular group must be interested in him. So he made his own steps go a little faster. The result was that those other footsteps sped up too. Hands still in his pockets, the beat of Scotch's footsteps increased… Then _their_ footsteps sped up. 

_____He knew full well who they were: his employers! Everybody knew that the Black Market always kept a close watch on all the mechanics in the city. A lot of mechanics tended to disappear too, taken to do whatever kind of machine-work the Black Market wanted them to do…. It was said that those mechanics were kept busier than Deckmens' brains, working in loud machine-places, fixing and maintaining the city's subterranean infrastructure, never again to see the light of day! Scotch _liked_ seeing daylight, so he didn't particularly favor being caught by those coming after him. 

__

_____Aw, heck, went Scotch. He took his hands out of his pockets then made a _run_ for it. And… _Yippee_! Dr. Sera said that his synth-flesh body was better than a real body, but she didn't say that he was now _this fast!_ The synthetic muscle tissue of his arms and legs were like powered rubber-bands, flexing and rebounding with amazing speed--his limbs almost a blur as he began to move.

_____He saw that he was getting to the end of this block, so he dashed across the street. There were some people sitting on the sidewalk, so he _leapt…_seemed to hang in the air for a long time, then came down--stumbling and shaking. Hot dog! The cyborgs looked at him for a while, looks of amazed p4shock on their faces: They'd never seen a fleshie jump like that before!

_____They just didn't know that Scotch wasn't really a fleshie. He turned and ran onward as the people in dark business suits. Yes, they were still coming after him. So he ran on. When he came to the next corner, he tried to slow down and run left… The trouble was, he was going so fast that his p4shoes _screeched_ on the concrete when he tried to turn himself…. He was sliding right into the traffic.

______Wham! _The hard front grille of a particularly large truck _smacked _right into him, and Scotch went airborne. He came back down _hard,_ landing right back in the street_. _Having worked around vehicles as long as he did, he had sense enough to roll himself sideways out of the street before any more vehicles could hit him. City traffic stopped for nobody.

_____After having rolled himself over the curb and up to the sidewalk, lying there for a second, he sat up. He realized some things. First, he realized that he was okay, that he had no broken bones--since his bones were now metal. Also, he realized that he had survived being hit by a truck! Dr. Sera said that his body wasn't as tough as a metal-type one, but he was tough enough.

______Thump!_ Just then, a rather strong-gripping hand came down on his left shoulder--the metal fingers gripping into his myogel muscle tissue there. It didn't hurt, really. But the slightly angry voice kept Scotch still. "Your name is _Scotch_, I believe," went the male cyborg in the dark business suit. "Would you accompany my colleagues and I to a rather…personal business gathering?"

_____"Sure! Why now?" nervously blurted Scotch. The metal hand on his shoulder then lifted him to his feet and didn't let go. He was led up to a waiting van, and everyone piled in to the back. Doors closed, the vehicle then motored away from this place on the sidewalk. 

…

_____Out here and far away, the city and its wall were a mile in the distance. There was a road that led into the city, leading up to huge concrete gates, but the gates were closed right now. No problem. They would just wait for the gates to open up some time today--or find another entrance. There were always ways to get into the city. 

_____In the meanwhile, they could just sit here and badger this crazy old stranger in coveralls who sat outside this burnt-out bus. The vehicle was probably used for shelter against the heat, though there were no traces of soot or grit on the old stranger or on the blackened bus… As if the burnt out bus wasn't out here for long.

_____Jimmy looked up at the gray-clouded sky overhead. The weather was clouded over and cool. It was seldom as cool as this out here in the wastelands. Soon enough, probably, there would be a rainstorm--a deluge. The dry earth would be awash with water for a little while, and then the water would be gone as quickly as it came.

_____"You playing or not?" asked Samantha, the green-haired cyborg-woman in a sleeveless jacket and boots--sitting at the new-looking table with five other bandits. For someone so pretty, she sure had a bad attitude and an even badder taste in clothes. "This guy here wants to play cards. And it looks like he's a real stud with that deck!"

_____"We'll play the game and I hope to sing them right this time," said the old stranger. _Fwip-fwip-fwip… _His old fingers were machine-quick in shuffling the deck. "I once knew the words, but I sang them wrong. I _sang them wrong!_" 

_____"Whatever, old-timer," said someone else. "Just get to dealing the cards. We ain't got all day… Oops, never mind! We sure do!"

_____Standing a few meters away, Jimmy had the feeling that there was something…not right about all of this. The burnt-out, junked bus didn't seem to have any grit on it. That table didn't look as if it had been out here in the desert for too long. And that old stranger didn't have the look of a wasteland-dweller. In fact, nothing of the old stranger's setup looked as if it had been in the desert for too long.

_____"Yeah… Whatever, old-guy," said Belial--a bandit with old livid scars all over his bare arms and chest. He wore pants and boots for an outfit, often going without a shirt or jacket. How he kept from becoming a cyborg for this long and took the desert heat without much covering was a wonder, given all of the cuts and burns he'd taken over the years. "We gonna play this 'game' of yours?"

_____"Guess we'll count you out, Jimmy!" said Samantha as the old stranger dealt out the cards, six cards each. Samantha put her hands on the cards she'd been dealt. "What game is this? Spades? Blackjack? Or… Heh-heh, _strip_ poker?" She leered, but the leer was replaced with a look of disgusted shock when she saw the kinds of cards she'd been dealt. "What the Hell kind of joke is this? I've never seen these kinds of playing cards before!"

_____"Screw it! Crazy old stranger, you just joked with the _wro-o-ong_ jokers. Let's just kill 'em!" declared Belial. He put the cards on the table and stood up, his chair going tumbling backwards. Everyone there moved menacingly towards the old stranger.

_____ The old stranger shook his head and shuffled the deck again. Suddenly, there was a sheer gout of flame that exploded from the ground! The sudden blast of heat and light caused Jimmy to go tumbling backwards, bringing up an edge of his jacket to keep himself from getting burned.

_____When he looked up, he saw that all of his fellow bandits were…gone. The table was gone too, along with the chairs. The only one there was the old stranger with his deck of cards--a deck that was now smoking. "I tried to let them know… I _knew the words…but I sang them wrong!_" He shouted, "_I knew the words!_" 

_____Then, as Jimmy watched, the junked bus burst into flames. There was fire all over it, more fire coming from inside it. The old stranger put the deck of cards in his left pocket and boarded the flaming vehicle, stepping into the flames. With its passenger aboard, the burning bus ambled away on melted rubber tires.

…

_____Back in the city, Scotch shakingly stepped out of the office-building. The Black Market people didn't rough him up or explicitly threaten his life. However, as they talked to him, they had their metal hands lightly resting on handguns atop the table. A female cyborg had both her hands on his shoulders--rather close to his neck. He had no doubt what those metal fingers could do to him, be he synthetic-bodied or not. 

_____They politely told him that his employers at the West-Side Arena were _worried_ about him. There was talk that, maybe, he was thinking about _quitting_ his oh-so-important mechanic's job. The debacle involving the "faulty" cyborg body was troubling, but that was no reason to avoid returning to regular labor, _was it_? Because if he didn't return to his employer, maybe the Black Market would see to it that the mechanical engineering talents in his mind would be put to…_other _uses?

_____In other words, if Scotch didn't get back to work, he would be made to "disappear." Scotch didn't want to end up like all of those other mechanics who'd "disappeared" because of the Black Market. For all he knew, they chained mechanics in underground factories and had them work on machines. Or maybe they would take out his brain and attach it to a legless manufacturing robot--a living brain to replace hard-to-find factory computer circuitry?

_____Anyway, he was now heading back to the West-Side Arena. He had work to do. Sure, it was the place where his brother was killed and where he was almost made dead. But risking accidents there was better than being made to disappear.


	7. Chapter Seven

__

All The Colors of Yesterday

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 7

…

"Falling"

vocal by Julee Cruise; lyrics by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti

…

_____Even years after the accident, these were clean and well-kept pedestrian lanes, though there were only metal statues to enjoy the view. The massive metal figures were kneeling at the sides of the sidewalk on specially reinforced marble platforms--designed to bear their weight. Well, no… They weren't just statues. Looking closer, one could see that their metal forms were jointed at the arms and legs, the heads--the faces, had lidded eyes. There were camera-lenses behind those closed eyes. 

_____They were sleeping until they needed to work again. The statues had long since removed what little trash there had been on the pristine lanes that ran between the clean buildings and among the large potted plants. Now, they had to but wait for there to be a sufficient amount of trash for them to move again--to clean. 

_____As there had not been any people around here for a very long time now, there was no trash or waste--no litter flapping along the street. When the citizens dropped dead from radiation sickness those years ago, most of them were indoors anyway--trying to cower and hide from the invisible and horrible deadliness of hard radiation: beta and gamma radiation, intense X-rays.. They tried to hide, though their hair was already falling out and their stomachs were heaving from intestinal bleeding. Cancerous lesions distorted the faces and skin of the survivors, while their bones became soft and misshapen. The people of Zalem--once healthy, noble, clean and proud--had died sickening and miserable deaths, bleeding and disgusting. So now, there were no humans alive to admire the clean beauty of the place.

…

_____As for the girl of the palace, she wasn't human... Inside the control room, placed deep within the palace, the "girl" was still at the main console--her great big robotic teddybear servant standing at her side. His furry shins were already well-kicked by her, and he hadn't moved for six hours. He was a faithful and loyal servant, more faithful than any human being could be. 

_____He hadn't moved from this spot for six hours because the girl hadn't. If the girl had been an actual human female, she would have required many "inconvenient" things, like food and sleep for one. She would have needed trips to the bathroom and shower. At her young age, she would also require someone to care for her. Instead, she was able to care for herself for the several years since her "father" had died. The "girl" at the console wasn't human--couldn't be human. 

_____Currently dressed in a pink dress, her frilly head of curls bouncing, the synthetic girl hummed a silly little tune as her little fingers and wrists moved at an incredible blur-fast pace--thousands of keystrokes per second. She _really_ wanted to get control of that gigantic metal beast that was stomping around in the sewers of a particular city. Anyone or anything _that_ powerful or _that_ influential on the ground, she just _had _to have control of it! Had to, had to, _had to_…_!_ She wanted a new toy!

_____And she was willing to sacrifice as many of her other toys as necessary. It had already cost her Mr. Coleco, one of her favorites! A favorite, because he was so colorful. Even if Mr. Coleco wasn't as fun to play with as other puppets, she still liked to use him. Oh well… She still had all her other toys down there in that city! Right now, another one of her favorites was becoming a little _too_ independent. So she was redoing some of his thought processes right now--all of those lines of programming code on the screen high on the wall… 

__

_____Blip..? Fwick! What was that? One of the right-side monitors flicked over to another view of this city--a high up view looking along a local street. The view was from a kind of bio-engineered cyborg-creation with dual wings and large single eye--its eye-signal now being transmitted to this control room. The "girl" _hated_ to be interrupted in her work! She was almost tempted to send a self-destruct signal to the winged camera-creature for sending her this image when she saw…

_____Instead, she was angrier at the intruder. "You creepy _jerk!_" she screamed at the one displayed on the monitor. She then got up out of the big comfy armchair and _ran_ over to the side-monitor on the wall. The robotic teddy bear ambled over to her side, to hear yet another scream. "What are _you_ doing here! This city is mine! Mine, mine, _mine! Ooh-h-h! I'm…so…mad! _" She stomped her foot to emphasize her point. "_Mad-mad-mad!"_

_____She turned to the line of robotic maids along the wall and pointed a finger at the monitor. "_Look _at that! What's _that_ doing in _my_ city, huh? I thought I told you dumb robots to get rid of all intruders! Nobody is supposed to be up here, not even survivors!" Her screaming turned to shrieking. "_How did that stranger even get up here, huh? How, how, how!_"

_____The monitor gave a closer view of the intruder, the old stranger. He was in his blue denim coveralls and walking along the middle of the street, his feet bare and something in his hands. He seemed to be shuffling a deck of cards. An even closer zoomed-in view showed that he was muttering something. Then the monitor became awash in static, a yellow light in the lower-right side of the monitor came on--indicating that the video signal had gone bad…

_____When the radio signal returned, the old stranger was gone from the street. Instead, there was a roughly man-sized pall of reddish smoke where he once stood. The pall of smoke was just now being dissipated, wisps of it carried away by the breeze. Something horrible must have happened to him.

_____"Ha-ha-ha…!" laughed the synthetic girl. It was likely that the old stranger was hit by an explosive anti-personnel projectile--fired by one of the robotic sentries. Her robots were everywhere--some for cleaning (like the maids), some for fixing…and some for killing. The killing kind of robots--her sentries--were massive two-legged metal machines with multiple heavy guns for arms. Though she didn't see any such one of her robotic sentries from the camera-creature's eye, it must already be stomping away after having blown the old stranger to smithereens. So what if there was no blood? He was gone! 

_____As mighty as the city's security drones were, none were so dominating and as mighty as the one on the ground called the "Adversary." Sure, she could design something that looked like the Adversary, but none of her copies would be like the original. She would have to find a way to get control of the Adversary-thing…

_____In the meanwhile, Barabbas was being troublesome. He was far too independent for her liking. She returned to her big comfy armchair and began typing out commands again. Barabbas _will _obey her commands. Or she will destroy him. If she couldn't play with him, then _nobody _would!

…

_____"_A-a-a-agh!_" screamed Barabbas, clutching his head. The muscular bandit leader in tee-shirt, jeans and boots sank to his knees--going down to the hard desert ground next to the cracked highway. "_Ai-i-iagh… Aa-a-rgh… Rr-r-r!_" He gasped for a few breaths, his strong square-jawed face contorted with inhuman agony and…_pa-a-ain! _His screams spread across the empty vastness of the surrounding wasteland, going up to the wide blue sky above. "_Aia-a-a-h-h-h!_"

______The other bandits kept their distance, though they all wanted to come to their leaders' aid. Some of the bandits were new to Barabbas' bunch, having once been farmers and workers from the wasteland farms. Most of them had never seen one of Barabbas' fits before. He really was having a fit of some sort, sickening and twisting pain from something that _stabbed _around inside of his head! 

_____There was nothing they could do. For all their loyalty and willingness to be with him, they could not help him. All they could do was watch as the beefy man squirmed on the hot dry ground and screamed as if his soul was being mutilated with jagged knives, the kind of knives wielded by fanged demons who feasted on pain and suffering.

_____"_R-r-rgh…" _he gurgled, going breathless and weakly squirming. Then he stopped writhing, stopped the yelling. He went still, waiting… Waiting to see if the pain returned. The agony faded from his head… It was gone. 

_____Ah…! He was feeling better! Free of agony, with just a lingering headache, Barabbas slowly stood again. He brushed at his shirt and knees. As usual, other than the grit and such, there was no sign of him having suffered. He wasn't even sweating. 

_____Even with the bright wasteland sun overhead, even though he'd just suffered immense pain, Barabbas didn't even sweat. They also noted that he almost never seemed to need to drink as much water as they did. He truly was a physically mighty leader, and he had the strength of mind to match his physical appearance. Even if he did occasionally have those pain-fits that sent him into writhing and screaming agony, they thought that their leader was something more than human.

_____"_Well!_ That was a rather intriguing experience!" He looked at his circle of friends--all of his fellow bandits. A smile spread across his face. "Friends, I now know of our next task in the city." He turned to face the pink-bodied cyborg-girl with dark hair and a pretty face, chewing on bubblegum. "Mai, tell me again of that monster of metal you have observed taken into the city…"

…

2.

…

_____It was the afternoon, and Scotch was in the driver's seat--a satchel of books and some tools in the passenger-side seat. His synthetic fingers gripped the cloth-covered metal steering wheel, and one of his workboot-covered feet was on the accelerator--the breeze blowing on his face. As he maneuvered his big-wheeled dune buggy among the looming heavy trucks and smaller executive cars, thoughts were wading through his mind. They were thoughts about today and where tomorrow was going for him, about how his life was now. Life wasn't that bad now, really. It wasn't really _good_, either… He was feeling somewhere in the middle.

_____He'd been working at the West-Side Arena all darned day. He had to help more experienced cyborg technicians reset and calibrate the mobility systems of Gogam--an especially big and especially old-bodied cyborg-gladiator with an awful lot of old insides. At least he didn't have to climb scaffolds this time. Gogam, like most cyborg-gladiators undergoing repairs and maintenance, was lying down atop a vast platform while the mechanics tended to his aging electromechanical insides. 

_____Scotch liked his work, couldn't really complain about it… He was a mechanic since he was a kid and liked doing what he did. He liked working with heavy metal parts, using nice solid tools, fixing large machines to make sure that they performed well when turned on… Fixing machines was what he did. All the same, there was always _that_ threat presented by those Black Market enforcers. 

_____Work…or _disappear! _He hadn't been made to "disappear" yet, but the metal-handed bullies in business-suits could always come for him and make it so. It was bad enough his brother was gone, and the twins were "gone" as well. Other than the wonderful Dr. Sera (who seemed to away on business all the time now) and some new buddies from the Arena garages, Scotch didn't really have any close friends in this big wide city--all full of buildings and industrial machine-structures.

_____Right now, all he wanted to do was drop by Patrick's pub, do some reading, eat some food and listen to Aikasa's singing. When she sang for an audience, how did she sound? Or maybe he just wanted to be close to Aikasa because she was friends with Dr. Sera. Anyone associated with that amazing woman, he just had to be friends with too. 

_____ Scotch couldn't believe it… All of the parking spaces at Patrick's place were occupied. Most all of the vehicles were personal cars--the kind that the Black Market executives drove. Also, the curb-side spaces along this street were occupied by yet more vehicles. He had to park his dune-buggy halfway around the block--around the corner--and walked back to here, his satchel slung over his left shoulder.

…

_____Inside the pub, the tables were occupied and all the stools at the drinking bar were as well. Forget about the couches. All four of the pub's couches were so full that some girlfriends were sitting on guys' laps--and vice-versa if the girls were metal-bodied. There were usually working cyborgs here, plenty of hard-working and metal-bodied people relaxing here after work with manufacturing and services. But now, about half of the crowd seemed to be wearing expensive-looking business clothes. They must have heard about Aikasa. Or they must have heard her singing--and wanted to hear more. 

_____Heck, so did Scotch. Saying _excuse me _and _pardon,_ he edged his way between the tables and made his way over to the bar. Two other well-dressed bartenders and even big Patrick himself, they were behind the raised counter of the drinking bar and all serving plenty of drinks to those thirsty customers. "Hey Patrick! I'll have me a beer!"

_____Patrick looked up and to the left. "He-e-ey laddy-boy!" yelled that familiar bar-owner above the din of the crowd. He handed a glass of wine to a metal-handed businessman and came over to here. With expert speed and skill, he perfectly filled a mug from the tap in two seconds and walked over to here. Scotch handed him a moderate-denomination chip, hesitatingly accepted. "Where've _you_ been? My business is booming big, plenty of thanks to that wee lass with that _sweet_ voice! You're welcome here…" A waitress in pretty skirt-uniform came around the bar and stood on her tip-toes to speak in Patrick's ear. "In fact, Aikasa's going to perform for us now!"

_____"Really? _Sweet!" _exclaimed the mechanic. His drink in his right hand and his satchel in his left, he thanked Patrick. He planned on doing some relaxing reading, sitting at a table, and listening to Aikasa's singing voice. It was now standing room only now! He was lucky enough to find a place along the back wall. His elbows were brushing those of two other people here in all the dimly lit vocal noise as he looked at the stage across this main room. At least, because he was standing, he had a clear view of the small stage and the musical instruments

_____They were already set up, the backup musicians and their miscellaneous equipment. The low microphone gleaming in a spotlight while the musicians tested their stuff… There was a drum-set, a fleshie drummer tapping and listening to the sound. A dark-haired cyborg-girl in denim jacket and jeans was standing behind a synthesizer keyboard, her metal fingers tapping the keys and making for trickling notes. The guitarist was a male cyborg in jeans, buttoned shirt and cowboy hat--his metal hands exposed beyond the cuffs of his shirt. 

_____It was just then that Scotch looked at the bottle of beer in his hands--his _synthetic _hands. He'd almost forgotten that he was a cyborg now, artificial insides and titanium bones covered over with myogel muscle tissue and artificial skin. His artificial organs didn't let him get drunk. Why the heck _did _he drink beer anymore? It was probably just out of habit…

_____Then _she _stepped out from behind the curtain. _Everybody_ shut up as Aikasa gracefully stepped up to the microphone stand. She was wearing a kind of white silken gown that seemed to flow over her slender figure, covering her from neckline to ankles, while her long pale hair had been combed straight back. Her feet were covered with white shoes.. The only color there was to her appearance was the crimson redness of her scarf and the jewel-like glittering green of her big beautiful eyes. The spotlight on her made her seem to glow while the other lights were turned down and the shades came over the windows.

_____In the darkened silence, spotlight on her, she bowed her head when the instruments began to play. First, there were drawn out and echoing notes of the guitar and light bell-like notes from the synthesizer…a mournful melody bringing to mind a gentle sunset behind tall mountains viewed across a green field--a cool spring day… Green fields before a forest, pretty flying animals called "birds" singing in the trees. Birds were extinct, but they seemed to live in the beautiful world of this wonderful melody created by the musicians. Then came gentle, sad singing from Aikasa's throat and lips…

…

__

Don't let your-self be hurt this time

Don't let your-self be hurt this time

…

The-e-n I sa-a-a-w your fa-a-ce…

The-e-n I sa-a-a-w your smi-i-i-le

The sky is still blue

…The clouds co-o-me and go…go…go…

Yet some-thing is diff-erent!

…Are we…fall-ing…in…love…?

…

Don't let your-self be hurt this time

Don't let your-self be hurt this time

…

The-e-n your ki-i-iss…so-o-o…soft

…The-e-n your to-o-uch…so-o-o …warm

…

The STARS still SHINE bright

The MOUN-TAINS still high…high…high…

Yet some-thing is DIFF-ERENT!

…A-a-are…we…fa-a-alling…in…love…?

….

FALL-ING… FALL-ING!

…Fa-a-alling… Fa-a-a-ling

…In…l-o-o-ove…?

…

_____For thirty more beautiful seconds, the synthesizer and guitar played the melody after the singing stopped. When that gently faded away, the indoor crowd was quiet. They were emotionally stunned, having heard such sad sweet beauty… Someone was even crying. 

_____The applause was deafening! Aikasa smiled and bowed while a waitress brought a chair and a glass of water up to the stage. Aikasa kept smiling as she sat down with her knees together, drinking the water. Clearly, just that one song seemed to drain her as she put herself into the music. But the effort was worth the affect.

…

3.

… 

_____Cruising along in his big-wheeled truck, Mai in the passenger seat and some fellow bandits sitting in the rear payload, Barabbas took a good look around. He commented, "Just look at that. Indeed, the elitist class of the city has managed to continue its oppression of workers. Notice the downtrodden slouching postures of the pedestrians, the looks on their work-weary faces… Though we have seen them laugh and relax, their minds are exhausted."

_____"Kinda…" added Mai, chewing pink bubblegum that was the same color of her pink metal body. Her hair was green this time, still done up in a ponytail. She looked to the right. Blowing and popping another pink bubble, she stared out the truck's window. "Yeah, they do look sorta tired. Like, they must work almost every day! At least they don't, you know, like…work as much as they used to. And, like, their heads don't get chopped off and traded in for cash. _Ick_." 

_____"Those are prominent arguments indeed," responded Barabbas, slowing down this truck with the slowed city traffic. "However, recall the continued existence of a _vicious _and _well-armed_ means of enforcing the class distinction between _workers _and _rulers_. Unlike the bounty hunters under the old regime, the maintainers of the societal division have _guns_. The workers are cowed by the existence of such harsh means of law enforcement, the laws of the wealthy and powerful."

_____"Yeah, there are all those guys in suits with guns. It's like they're always lookin' for somebody to shoot! It kinda makes me scared too…" agreed Mai as she eyed the sidewalk traffic. Most everyone out here was in workers' clothes: coveralls or shirts, jeans and hard shoes. It was a mixed crowd of fleshies and cyborgs, going along and moving along in small groups and as individuals. Every so often, this truck passed by hard-scrubbed vacant lots and outdoor cafes--the places full of people sitting on chairs and relaxing. 

_____Mai remembered living around here, in the city. She remembered work in the Zalem-run factory-buildings when she was still a fleshie. All day, every day, she worked all the time. She didn't like the idea of cutting off people's heads (_Ew-w-w!_), so being a bounty hunter was out. Her pert and dark-eyed good looks were enough to make her a girl who "walked the sidewalks," but she didn't want to do _that_ either… So she continued to work in the factory, saving up for a really good cyborg body.

_____Working in the factory wasn't easy, and it was getting worse. Her fingers and nose were beginning to grow numb and discolored from the toxic chemicals she had to work with… She was getting headaches, and her eyes were beginning to get blurry as well. When she finally lost some fingers to a sharp edge of a conveyor belt, leaving her bleeding and crying, she finally left her factory job. She bought her first female cyborg body, had the surface done in pink ceramics. As soon as she recovered from the body-replacement operation, she left the city and became a bandit…

_____Now here she was, back in the city, no longer a slave to the machines. As Mai's thoughts wandered, Barabbas drove this truck by another vacant lot full of relaxing workers sitting on junk. Her eyes came to focus on one old guy in particular. 

_____The old stranger looked up from his game of cards over there, looking at this cyborg-girl in the big-wheeled truck. The old stranger and Mai made eye contact, staring at one another. Mai's mouth went wide open, nearly making her lose her bubblegum, when the old stranger in coveralls _winked _at her! Yuck! "_Pervert…_" she muttered.

______Kablam! Fw-o-o-sh… _"_Oh, for goodness' sakes!_" shouted Barabbas when a section of the street _exploded_ upwards. He braked this vehicle just as trucks and people went _flying _up and away from the blast, tossed like life-sized metal toys_. _There was then _another _explosion, this one a clear and bright fluorescent blast of plasma energy that shot up to the sky from beneath the streets. Barabbas' excellent skill and reflexes had allowed him to stop this truck without trouble.

_____Three cars ahead, there was a massive smoking gap in the city street. _Hole _was a word too small to fit the gaping maw now there. Something _huge_ must have made that explosion. And, right now, that huge thing was climbing up to the surface.

______Whirr-CLANK! _A gigantic, three-tined claw-hand came up and gripped into the edge of the smoking gap. _Whir-r-r…!_ There was a sound of electromechanical strands working as the thick and mighty metal arm pulled the rest of the milti-colored metal beast up from below. _Clomp-clomp!_ The silvery square hooves came to rest on solid ground--street asphalt--and it took several stomping steps away from where it came up from.

_____People began to run, of course. Scared stiff for a few seconds, fleshies and cyborgs got to their feet and made a run for it--at least the ones whose bodies weren't damaged in the blast. Some were still in their cars and trucks, trying to maneuver around the stalled traffic. 

_____"Like, _w-o-o-ow!" _excitedly exclaimed Mai, bouncing up and down in her seat and pointing. "Like, that's the big metal monster-thing we saw out in the desert! That's the Adversary! Oh, wow-wow-_wow!_ Looks like somebody tried to, like, change its paint job or something. _Yuck… _Like, _gross_ paint-job…!" 

_____"_REALLOCATE target! O.S. ERROR…!" _boomed the amplified machine-voice of the gigantic metal beast. "_TARGET probability is increasing! BZZT!_" It raised its left claw-hand and _swiped_ the expensive-looking car ahead. "_TARGETING!_"Then it took aim with its right arm-cannon and began charging up for a shot--terrible plasma-energies beginning to swirl and build deep within the cannon-barrel….

_____The driver was already dead--killed when the claw-hand first came down and smashed the front of the car. But two of the passengers--a man in business suit and woman in white slacks and lab-coat--managed to scramble out as the Adversary's plasma arm-cannon began to glow red… 

______Bla-a-am! _There was then a massive, loud and bright _blast_ as the Adversary let loose with its arm-cannon. The businessman was knocked unconscious…or dead. But the scientist-woman staggered to her feet, her white clothes smudged with grit and smoke.

______She stood there stunned and dizzy as the Adversary began to clomp in this direction. From what direction? Her ears were buzzing from the blast, and everything was looking screwy. She had the vague idea that the Adversary was very close by--close enough for her to feel the fusion heat radiating from its metal body… 

_____For just a moment, the chunky metal-bodied monster towered over her. The optical sensors in its chest trained on her face and her mane of fluffy red hair. Deep within its simple electronic brain, growling, the Adversary knew that this was not a target. It lowered itself, bending its construction-machine legs as if to kneel before her.

______Wham-m-m-m…! _A truck hit it from the side, making the Adversary go tumbling away sideways. Lying on it side, mighty claw arm and metal legs squirming, the Adversary made growling and snarling noises as its simple electronic brain tried to process what the Hell just happened. It was the metal beast's equivalent of anger. 

_____"_Tally-ho!_" shouted Barabbas, hopping out of his now wrecked truck. He grabbed the pretty scientist doctor, slung her over one of his mighty shoulders as if she was a human-sized doll. Then he turned and began making mighty long-strides in getting away from here.. All of this happened in rapid succession, in seconds. 

_____When they were a block away, running with some of his comrades, she shouted, "Set me _down,_ you broad-chested brute! I have two perfectly good legs of my own! I know because I made them myself--along with the rest of my body!" 

_____Barabbas stopped running, and so did his fellow bandits. Even with the sounds of screaming in the distance, he stood there and pondered the thought. _Made…legs_…? This statement struck Barabbas as being odd… Slung over his shoulder, she _felt _like a fleshie woman. He reached up with his other hand and stroked the curves of her calves--felt the flesh through the cloth of the white slacks… No, her legs definitely weren't metal. Then she began to pound on his back with rather strong hands. "_Stop groping me, you pervert!_" she shouted.

_____He set her down. Flustered, the pretty red-haired scientist-woman straightened her lab coat and other clothing, then gave him a glare as he looked over her beautiful body in tight white slacks and silken top, somewhat covered by her open lab-coat. "My, my…!" he said, "You're a rather feisty one. But how are _you _a cyborg? You certainly don't _feel _like one." 

_____The answer came in the form of a loud _slap-p-p_ across his left cheek. It was a nice solid one, too--the kind that left his head turned to the side. He then heard the female scientist's feet pattering away--going at a fast pace. He also heard Mai giggling at him just before the other bandits burst into laughter. 

_____"No good deed goes unpunished, as an ancient saying goes," he said as he shook his head. "Oh, the costs of courage!" Barabbas didn't know it, but he had just "helped" (and groped the shapely legs of) the most important research scientist in the city.

…

4.

…

_____Going into the apartment building, Scotch nodded to the security guy--a hefty cyborg--and went for the stairs. He jogged his way up the stairs, still feeling especially quick and agile despite his head feeling like crap. This synthetic body of his never grew tired. His brain, though, was still a living thing; his brain getting tired right about now… 

_____He noticed that he tended to get odd headaches if he worked for too long, a kind of headache that dragged down on his thoughts and made him want to go to sleep. Well, he was almost up to the floor where he lived. He would take a nap, read some newsprints about gladiatorial battles, then maybe drive out to Patrick's pub or something to talk to people until it was time to go to sleep. Some friends from work were supposed to be there…

_____Ah, here it was--up on the third floor, the hallway going left and right. His place was apartment 3-6, on the right. It was still the same apartment he and his brother moved into when they first arrived in the city. Scotch wanted to live on a higher floor and have a better outdoor view of the city, even if a person did have to keep the window closed during the day due to the air pollution. But Duct, being the big heavy guy he was, didn't feel like "goin' up an' down 'bout six hundred stairs every day and every night, dang-nabbit." As Scotch unlocked the five locks and chains on the door, he thought about his brother. Yeah, he was going to miss the big guy. 

…

______He walked in, closed the door behind him. The single-room apartment was still surprisingly neat and sparsely furnished--with two bedrolls on the floor and two small chests of drawers near the wall, the drawers holding underwear, shirts, socks and (of course) coveralls. In the kitchen area, there was the table by the Venetian-blinded window, used for eating and reading--still with his brother's chair where he left it. He was going to have to do all the dishes alone p now. 

_____After walking in, Scotch locked three of the five locks. He turned to look around the place. Because it was late afternoon, deep orange-red sunlight was slanting through the thin metal slats of the apartment's Venetian blinds, making for lined patterns on the table and the floor. The table… 

_____Did somebody leave something on the table? He walked over there, eyes on the rectangular object atop the smooth synthetic wooden surface. Yawning, the tired mechanic picked it up. Oh yeah, he was getting that funny tired-headache sort of feeling again… Then he looked all over the object, the card. One side had the Queen of Diamonds on it, the stylized double-image of the playing-card character having dark hair and wearing a red crown. On the other side, the back, there were black and white jagged lines--just those typical designs… He wriggled it up and down, the card making _flap-flap-flap_ noises… It seemed to be made out laminated playing-card paper, though a little stiffer. 

__

_____Hmmph, just your typical playing card, he thought to himself. Wonder how it got in here? Maybe he just picked it up somewhere and forgot about it until now. Oh well… 

_____He yawned again and began to stagger over to his bedroll. _Man, _he really needed a nap! As Scotch laid down on the soft bedroll, the air vent was blowing in somewhat cool air into the room. He drifted off into his nap, glad to know that at least _some _things worked in this apartment…

_____Wait a second… Since when do playing card queens have _dark_ hair? And _red _crowns? He must've played a million games of cards in his life with all kinds of decks. But he _never_ saw a red-crowned queen before. Playing-card queens always had sun-colored hair. He thought about getting up to check that card again, tried to…_raise his head… Nope, he wasn't getting up! He thought he heard the playing card begin to hiss--putting out smoke…. And was someone laughing?_

…

_____ "_Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…" The laughter… The deep laughter, it was…carried through the darkness on howling breeze. And it blew right into a dimly lit and narrow alleyway. The familiar red-brick walls were close, left and right. That old stranger was still playing cards at that makeshift table of his, a single low-powered light bulb shining down on a simple cone-shaped metal fixture_. 

_____Scotch was here before, and the setup was almost completely the same. But some details had changed. The old stranger's coveralls were a rusty brown-red color this time. There was also a different arrangement of cards on the table--three cards for the old stranger and three for the shadowy opponent. That shadowy opponent seemed _bigger _this time--more muscular-armed and broad-shouldered. Still, the face was still covered in shadows.

______"I'll sing them right this time,_" said the old stranger in red coveralls, looking at the shadowy figure sitting across from him at the low table. "_I know the words because it's an old…sad…song…" _He looked down at his deck of cards--his old fingers becoming a rapid-speed blur. _Fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip… "I'll sing them right!_"

_____Still shuffling the cards, the old stranger's face became more and more worried, while the shadowy opponent leaned back away from the table and began a deep-throated sort of laugh… _Hmm! Hmmm-hmm! Hwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…! _It was that deep and bellowing laughter he heard when he first got here. Then Scotch saw the shadowy opponent's left hand as it reached out from the darkness to move a card. It was a hand that looked as if it had been badly burned, with thick fingernails at the ends of the fingers. 

_____Still shuffling the deck of cards, the old stranger suddenly smiled a crooked-toothed smile. "_I knew the words! I knew THE WORDS!_" he declared as one of the cards flickered out from the deck the old stranger had been shuffling. Flying out from the rest of the shuffling deck, the green-tattooed card landed on the table--making the shadowy stranger hesitate…and _snarl_. 

_____It wasn't a playing card. Instead, Scotch saw that it was a computer circuit-card. He did not know much about computers, those electrical machines used by scientists and technicians, yet he knew a computer machine-part when he saw one. How did a computer circuit-board get into the old stranger's deck of cards? Where had he been hiding it? 

_____The circuit-board atop the table began to take on a glowingly florescent color. He couldn't even look at it as it was just so bright. Sparks began to flick out from it. The shadowy opponent edged away from the table while the old stranger smiled. Scotch didn't understand the rules of the game, but it seemed that this move in the game was a win over the shadowy stranger.

_____"_No one will be left and gone without me, not anymore!_" declared the old stranger. He looked past the shadowy opponent and directly at Scotch. Scotch tried to turn and run… _But in a dream, running is almost always impossible. It felt as if he was running in slow-motion, trying to get away, when a sudden dark gust blew him out of the alley and into the darkness…_

…

______"_Gya-a-ah!_" he gasped, sitting up on his bedroll. He quickly looked left and right, hands gripping the thick top of the sleeping surface. His breathing slowed when he realized where he was: still in his apartment. _Yeah,_ he thought to himself, _it was just a dream, gosh darn-it… _It wasn't real at all--just something crazy. The orange-red of the sunset was still slanting through the apartment window. His nap was just minutes, though it seemed much longer than that… It was as if he hadn't napped at all--was brought right back to the time when he laid down on the bedroll. Did the dream mean something? He had the strong idea that it did…

…

_____While Scotch recovered from his odd dream, something had just happened in a local warehouse basement--crates and large cube-shaped machines along the wall. Six men in business suits were dead, lying on the concrete floor, their eyes staring blankly as blood leaked from their ears and noses. One of them, a cyborg, was still twitching--a red scarf clutched in his left metal hand. But his brain was dead. 

_____Her arms close at her sides, Aikasa took mincing, careful steps towards the still-twitching body-- her little white shoes barely making any noise. Her shorts were smudged and the right sleeve of her short-sleeved blouse was torn, but her outfit was generally intact. They were going to _hurt _her in a very bad way--one of the worst kinds of hurt that could happen to a girl in the city.

_____Even then, she didn't want to kill anyone. She screamed and begged them to _let go_ and _please don't do this_ as the drunken men in business suits carried her down into the warehouse basement. She really was carried. Because she was just so petite and light and they were so big, one of them just carried her under one of his arms--the arm wrapped around her waist. 

_____She shouldn't have let this happen at all. After her last performance for today, Aikasa was just walking along the sidewalk when someone _snatched_ her scarf--and ran to a car. She ran over to the car and tried to get back her scarf. A good friend made it for her, made it from unique materials, and there was no other scarf like it in the whole world. She just _had _to get it back! That was when the drunken cyborg businessman grabbed her slender wrists and pulled her in--his buddies sitting next to her. They had her netted in. 

______A pretty one, isn't she--so small and cute… Look at that! She's got natural slits on the sides of her pretty little neck. You can barely see 'em unless she tilts her head to the side_. _No wonder why she was wearing the scarf. So the pretty little girl's a _mutant! They spat out that word--_mutant_--as if it was something disgusting and low. _Mutant…! Pretty little _mutant_ doll-girl! Those look a bit like fish-gills! Can you really breathe water, pretty little _mutant_-girl? Is there anything else different about that nice-looking body of yours? Let's find out! _

_____Drive to Jack's shipping warehouse! We got a basement there! No one's going to mess with us there! And we can, heh-heh, do what we want with her… They took her down here where no one would see them or hear her…. Down into this wide and dimly lit basement. They surrounded her, and still she hesitated. Only when one of them reached out and tore her blouse did she pull in a deep breath, close her eyes… and _scream_. 

_____Looking at her, a person would think of her as just being a petite, pretty and young female--someone to be doted over and hugged. They also saw her as being a lonely and defenseless little thing… But there were reasons why Aikasa generally stayed alone, why she didn't stay close to people. It wasn't because she was afraid of what people would do to her. It was because of what _she_ could do to otherpeople. 

_____People generally left her alone. Some people became unusually interested in her at times--and even they let her be. There were even times when some people became _too_ interested in her. When that interest became bigger than their senses of right and wrong, that was when trouble happened. They took things too far. 

_____Aikasa's voice wasn't just capable of producing sweet melodies wonderful to human minds, singing that gave a person a sense of peace and healing. She was also able to generate extremely intense sound-waves, set at a frequency that resonated with normal brain tissue--_especially_ brain tissue. The frontal lobes of human brains were the most severely effected… When she _screamed_, she killed the brains. Simply put, the thin and pale-haired little girl _screamed_ the drunken jerks to death. This wasn't the first time she had _screamed_ people to death. And this probably wouldn't be the last time. 

_____When the corpse finally stopped twitching, Aikasa knelt down and took back her precious red scarf from the dead jerk. A few shakes, and the special velvet-like material was free of grit. Luckily, it was still moist as well--the synthetic material still retaining water and moistness. 

_____She wrapped the red scarf around her neck again and rubbed. Much better. Her gills were beginning to feel a little dry. Where was her purse…? Ah, there it was--conveniently set atop a metal crate. The stairs up and out were nearby. After she left this underground place, an unnoticed playing card fluttered off of one of the crates--snatched by an indoor air current…

…

5.

…

_____Though there were plenty of bright streetlamps, neon signs, and outside of buildings, though the city's mighty underground fusion power-plants had infinite amounts of electricity to spare for even more streetlights, there were still parts of the city shrouded in darkness when the sun went down. These were places behind older factory-buildings and in abandoned basements filled with junk no one bothered to clean out. Some apartments were also shadowy, the electrical wiring not well-maintained. The same was true for some entire city blocks--how the wiring was so bad that there just wasn't any electricity… 

_____Those were bad parts of the city, where bad things happened to people who were either not careful or who didn't care. People were sometimes snatched off of the street and taken to those places and sometimes found dead or worse the next morning. What could be worse? Being robbed or just plain killed was one thing. But having parts of one's body being taken, being left crippled and mutilated, that was something else. Organ thieves sometimes took body parts from fleshies, stitched the victims back up (a weak attempt at avoiding murder charges), and left them twitching in garbage-strewn lots. Or sometimes, people…just…disappeared…

_____The dark places were not good. Friends told each other to stay away from those areas without light. Mothers told their children to avoid those places where the light did not shine. People out at night for drinks and good times also stayed away from those places of light-swallowing gloom--knowing what could happen to them if they went close. Even members of the Black Market, having become more legitimate these days, know better than to go to those lowly and shadowy places after the sun went down. 

… 

_____And it was in such a dark place that Barabbas was holding this night's gathering. It was in the back of a synthetic flavorings manufacturing factory-building--where a moderate-sized company made red-looking artificial sweeteners from all kinds of chemicals. The food chemicals were heated, mixed up in gigantic vats, prepared, then piped directly over to food processing plants and shipped to bottling plants. The bottles were sent to warehouses and restaurants by way of big heavy trucks. 

_____It was after sunset, after working hours. The towering machine-building was dark--some machinery still humming beyond barred windows. With work done, this was now a dark place ...

______Fwo-o-osh! _Six flames began to shoot up from six old metal barrels--full of dry newsprint and chemically contaminated waste-paper that burned easily. The flaming barrels were set up in a circle, the dancing flames illuminating the meeting area with its hard-packed dirt. There were over a dozen people here--cyborgs and fleshies. Some were in coveralls, and some were in tee shirts and jeans. All of their clothing was neat and clean, and all of their faces were clean--hair groomed. 

_____The small crowd stood there as the chilly night winds blew across, playing with the flames from the burning barrels. Then came footsteps… Barabbas stepped up on the stage and spread his arms in a gesture of welcome. Other than the bandage worn around his head, he seemed to be his typically well-kept self: jeans and tee-shirt, heavy workboots on his feet. Though it was chilly, their muscular leader seemed not to mind--though there was only the thin material of his shirt to protect his upper body from the chilling cold. 

_____He lowered his thick and mighty arms. "Welcome…! Welcome to you all! You are all probably wondering why I have called a meeting. If you don't know why you were called here, that would be a good thing: It means that our secretive means of communication are still secretive. A little slip of paper here, a little coded graffiti over there… Yes, we are able to communicate and to have meetings without the Black Market knowing. Even if they did know of this meeting, the Black Market would probably just interpret it as being just another late-night orgy of city dwellers after working hours--another instance of corporate carelessness.

_____"And it is exactly _that _carelessness that we are going to take advantage of! Yes, careless… The Black Market is _careless--_like Zalem. Those fools of that floating city were careless: So long as we worked in their factories and did not destroy 'Factory Propterty,' Zalem did not care _what _we did to ourselves or what happened in our lives. 

_____"As for those who think Zalem 'cared' enough when they outlawed murder, _that _law was only under the premise that workers were property. That's what we were, down here on the ground: property. Zalem was just protecting its best interest when it hired bounty hunters to maintain their laws. Then there we were, struggling with the dirt of the land on wasteland farms and in the hard loud machines of the factories--producing food and goods for those _careless _wealthy fools up there.

_____"But guess what? Yes, Zalem's dead. Nobody remains alive in the oppressive city of the wealthy. However, here we _still _are--working in these factories and on the farms." At this point, Barabbas clenched his fists, the meaty muscles of his arms rippling as he growled, "_We're still working for an oppressive ruling class that may as well be up in some floating city!_" 

______He's so-o-o cool,_ thought Mai, standing in at the front of the small crowd. To blend in, she was dressed in neat jeans, dark shoes and clean tee-shirt. Her green hair was in a thick braid, the color not noticeable in the low gloom of the firelight. Dressed this way and with the light low, the pink of her metal body was hidden, and the odd color of her hair wasn't noticeable. 

_____Barabbas pointed up at the sky. "I'll tell you what happened to Zalem: _karma! _All of those years of Zalem making evil and hardship, all of the evil done, _something _had to happen. Again, I use the term _carelessness_. That carelessness about us here on the ground eventually led to _carelessness _up there. The result: When their _careless _maintenance workers didn't maintain the nuclear power facilities, a _careless_ accident happened: flooding the entire floating city with hard radiation and killing everything alive! Though no one we know has really been up there since they went silent, we are sure that the Floating City has become a floating necropolis--a floating concrete and metal corpse of a city!"

______So good so far,_ she thought. _Or did the saying go, So far, so good? _Oh well… Barabbas was behaving pretty normally for someone who had undergone brain surgery an hour ago. Well, it wasn't exactly _brain _surgery because Barabbas really didn't have a brain! 

_____The truth was, he was a replicate. Barabbas was a chip-brained, synthetic-bodied android. She found that out when she went with him to the back-room of a "doctor." It was like a dentist's office from the old days--a small store-front setup with a medical clinic seat--a bright light overhead. Except, the seat had straps. One of the straps went over the eyes, holding the head in place as the chubby guy with the metal hands and the camera-eye went to work by taking off the top of Barabbas' skull…

_____That was why he was wearing a cloth bandage wrapped around his forehead. "Now… _Now_, another kind of _carelessness _rules the city, my fellows," he growled, raising a fist. There was the sound of crackling flames from the burning barrels all around. "Zalem is gone, but now the Black Market has taken over. The Black Market was always there, working in the shadows and doing kinds of dark and harmful business to make money and build influence. When Zalem went, the Black Market emerged from the darkness and took over."

_____Mai's mind wandered back to the time she was in the doctor's office. The doctor told Mai that general anesthetic wouldn't work on Barabbas because he wasn't human. Mai didn't understand how that could be true, and the doctor didn't bother to explain any more. Instead, she saw that the doctor use some complicated tools to first cut Barabbas scalp, then undo his metal skull. Strapped down, Barabbas sat very still while the doctor's electronic tools went to work in his opened-up head. 

______If he dies, I'll kill you,_ she told the doctor. _Then I'll kill you some more. _The doctor smirked as he disconnected a rectangular piece of computer hardware from Barabbas' brain-chip, removed it from his skull, then closed up the head. Barabbas synthetic body had a small supply of nanobots for auto-repair; the synthetic skin of the skull would "heal" on its own. Until then, he had best wear a bandage to keep people from wondering why the circular slit around his head didn't bleed or get infected. 

_____"Will we wait for karma to act, as it did already? No we will _not_ wait for the force of cosmic justice to eventually destroy the Black Market oppressors!" continued Barabbas. "We care about the plight and the suffering of the hard-working city people and the farmers who work in the wasteland farms. Cosmic justice and rightness will be with us as we unseat the Black Market from its saddled position of oppression!

_____"How do we do that? As I speak, there is something raising random chaos in the city, something that the Black Market is unable to stop. That something is known as the Adversary--a metal beast stronger than war machines from Ancient times. With the Black Market powerless to stop it despite their usage of guns, we will take advantage of the anarchy and chaos. When the Adversary strikes and the strong-armed, gun-toting thugs of the Black Market are powerless, _we _will step in and take over. We are agitators…who care…_for the people! _Oh-h-h, _yes!_ _Let's r-r-rock!_" 

_____With that jubilant shout from Barabbas, everyone threw up their arms and began to dance around. There was drinking and shouting, chanting filling the gloom and shadows. The flames from the barrels roared higher as some people threw some extra things into the barrels… Mai didn't know where the drinks were coming from and who bought the music players, but things had gotten pretty rowdy in a hurry. It was time to party down!


	8. Chapter Eight

__

All The Colors of Yesterday

Chapter 8

by Elliot Bowers

…

"Questions in A World of Blue"

vocals by Julee Cruise

lyrics by David Lynch; music by Angelo Badalamenti

…

______Sloosh-sloosh-slosh… _The discolored beast of chunky alloyed steel boldly strode through the water-bottomed darkness, its optic sensors seeing everything in blocky red. It had switched over to infrared to navigate the dark parts of these sewers. It was not minutes ago that something tried to attack the Adversary: something with slavering jaws, quick as a reptile, with too many teeth…about the size of a child. 

_____Mutants, were they really human? Some were simply twisted, horrid things with minds that did not go far beyond _run, kill _and _eat. _Were they lucky to have survived being born, these forsaken and twisted things of the sewers? Most died soon after childbirth, their bodies too compromised to be viable, and some were simply put out of their misery. The ones that lived usually found it safer and easier to stalk the sewers. When live prey came down here--rats, stray dogs, the hapless human--the mutants attacked. Except in this last case, the live prey wasn't so easy… 

______Sloosh-slosh_… _Clomp-clomp. _This tunnel came to end in a small square chamber, three smaller tunnels branching out to the left, right and front. But the tunnels were too small for the huge beast to get through. The Adversary's simple electronic brain took in the data and calculated a solution. If it could not go forward again, it would go up. 

…

_____"Do you hear something, Aunt Janine?" asked the curly haired teenager in jeans and oil-smudged work-shirt. He looked up at the female cyborg higher up on these wide apartment steps. She frowned and listened for a while--then shook her head and smiled. She may have heard something, but the sound was gone. 

_____It was getting late into the night, but everyone was having such a good time--drinking and talking--that they probably wouldn't go to bed for a while. Aunt Janine and Bobby were sitting on the big wide stairs of the apartment, while three male cousins were nearby and playing cards--talking, drinking and occasionally laughing. Aunt Janine herself was an orange-haired female cyborg, a bottle of beer in her somewhat large metal hands. Bobby always thought Aunt Janine's metal hands were a bit large for the rest of her slim and young-looking metal female form. 

_____When Bobby was a small kid, he asked why her hands were so big. _The better to tickle you with, silly! _Then she would tickle him into fits of giggles until he couldn't take it anymore. Then he and his little brother would play checkers or get another reading lesson from Aunt Janine. He liked visiting Aunt Janine on her days off--the only days he could visit her. 

_____The truth was, Aunt Janine had worked in a metal reprocessing facility. Her hands had to be large to work with the heavy controls of manufacturing machines: controls too big and tough for the weak fingers of fleshie hands. She had worked most all the time when Zalem was in charge, working days and nights, but she wasn't bitter about it. Her pretty and friendly face almost always had a smile when he and his little brother was around. 

_____Bobby had only seen Aunt Janine angry a few times, and that was only when she spoke to his mother--_yelled _at the woman. Bobby's mother beat him and his brother Jake often... Too often, thought Aunt Janine! Bobby thought that mothers were just like that, getting angry and beating their children. But whenever Aunt Janine yelled at Bobby's mother and threatened with those machine-hands of hers, Bobby's mother would cower down and not beat them for a while. Then she would drink and start up again… 

_____Aunt Janine had told Bobby and little Jake to make a run for it when they were old enough. Get a job and get _away_ from their mother--who earned money working with water-pipes. When Bobby was big enough to fend for himself and drive a vehicle, he took his little brother with him and managed to get a job. Bobby got a lucky job delivering newsprint paper--a job given because he could read. Jake--who was barely eight years old--stayed at the new place they called home: the room of a certain abandoned building. 

_____Things didn't last that way. Jake became sick from drinking contaminated water and died almost instantly. Bobby later heard that their mother had gotten drunk and staggered into truck traffic, killed outright…around the time that the City of Zalem had that accident with their power plants. All the same, Jake always had the fear that the mother would come back. He feared stomping shoes clomping into his home and waking him up. Then the beating would begin. 

_____"You're thinking about that worthless jerk-mother of your again, huh?" asked Aunt Janine, looking at Bobby--who was looking across the night-darkened street. Having been alive for so long and knowing her nephew so well, she was able to tell when his mind was on his mother. "I'm still ashamed to say that the idiot was even my own sister. She never tried to hit me 'cause I was older than she was, but she just kept picking fights and killing small animals… Rats…. Your grandmother tried to set her right. Nothing worked. Something was wrong with her brain, we figured. Yeah, something crazy…" Aunt Janine then took a sip of beer. 

__

_____"I don't know… I always get the idea that she's going to come back and come for me or something," answered Bobby. "There's this idea stuck in my head that I'm always doing something wrong and punishment is going to happen. All the time. My boss says I'm good and reliable. But still…"

_____ "Hmmph… It's not you, if that's what you're thinking. Yeah, again… It's your mother…" Aunt Janine let that statement hang in the air for a few seconds, taking another sip of her beer and leaned back on the stairs. The three cousins laughed at an obscene joke one of them made just before an explosion rocked the night. Everyone turned to look. 

_____ Part of the street had exploded upwards in a blast of fluorescent light. _Plasma blast,_ thought Aunt Janine. She knew what a plasma blast looked like--having seen the same thing vented by alloy fabrication furnaces. But that was no blast from a furnace. _That_ was from a weapon.

______For goodness' sake! _Bobby looked to Aunt Janine, who simply said, "_Run…_" Then she flung her skinny nephew over one of her metal shoulders and making a dash for it. The three male cousins were close behind--going up the wide apartment stairs and into the huge apartment building itself. They had left their _go _board out there, but nobody wanted to go out and get it.

_____Out there, the big-wide beast of metal stood at the edge of the gaping hole in the street, some of the street-lights flickering from electrical interference. With the combination of the flickering street-lighting and the garish paint-job on its body, the Adversary looked more like the monster it was. It was thinking like a monster now: It had detected targets around here. And it wanted to destroy more targets. Destruction was the thing that filled its simple electronic brain. _Target… Target… _

_____"_Y-e-e-e, HAW!_"came the shout from somewhere along the city street. There was a ridiculously loud squeal of tires, and a junky looking car came zipping down the city street. If rapid acceleration didn't ruin the tires, then the skidding stop must have done the job--leaving long black streaks on the asphalt. About six cyborgs in coveralls came piling out of the vehicle, each with all kinds of big rifles. 

_____Then there was a great deal of noise and light, sounds of _crack-crack _and _bo-oom _filling the city night as that group opened fire on the Adversary. The Adversary's chunky metal body was suddenly lit up with flashing sparks and big blasts while it tried to take aim with its plasma arm cannon--trying to steady its gun-arm under this massive barrage. 

_____Out of all of those blasts, oneincrediblylucky shot went up the arm cannon's barrel at just the right time. There was a sudden splash of florescent glowing energy, loose and wild, spilling out from the arm-cannon. Growling, the Adversary tumbled backwards--falling into the hole in the street. There was a loud ground-shaking _crash-h-h _from below and those farmers stopped firing….

_____"_We beat that thing off!_" they shouted. "_Look, people! Barabbas' rebels help you all out! Not the Black Market! We did! Barabbas' rebels! Remember that!_" They made whooping celebratory noises and began dancing around though there were no citizens in sight. One of them got a can of spray paint of the car, sprayed a message on the cracked street near the gap. That done, they piled themselves and their rifles back into the jalopy of a vehicle and drove off.

_____Aunt Janine, Bobby and the rest went outside again--as did some other neighbors on this residential urban neighborhood. The people walked over to the message that had been left behind: done in spray-paint some color. Someone lit a flashlight and played it over the letters. The message read, _THE REBELS OF BARABBAS SAVED YOU! THE BLACK MARKET DID NOT! REMEMBER THAT!_

_____"Looks like someone's trying to move in on the Black Market," said Aunt Janine. "People have been talking about this 'Barabbas' guy before. Wonder who he is…" She then turned to one of Bobby's older cousins and put her big hands on her alloyed hips. "Sounds Looks like that _Barjack _stuffall over again, doesn't it?" 

…

2.

…

_____The next morning, burning red sunlight shone through Scotch's window. He woke with a slight headache and stomach-ache. Maybe he was still getting used to this synthetic body, or this synthetic body was getting used to _him_. The funny thing Scotch learned about being a cyborg was that his body sometimes had an attitude of its own. He wondered if it was the same way for metal-type bodies. Anyway, he washed up and put on some more coveralls. He had to go to work… 

_____Three hours later, he was at work in a basement garage of the West-Side Arena. Somebody around here had a radio going--playing some synthesizer-backed rock music--while Scotch was working on a hydraulics capacitor for Gogam. The greasy metal part was cylindrical and about the size of a large fist. Opened up, there were all kinds of rods and gears inside it--like an overly complicated piston. Truth was, Scotch had never seen this kind of thing before. 

_____At least he had the general idea about how it worked. He just had to remember where all the parts went after he systematically disassembled it. Then the hydraulic capacitor's internal parts were around the table, and he was cleaning one of the gears… Gee, no wonder why Gogam's right punch was a little slow: this thing had a chipped gear!Analog systems were great for gladiator-cyborgs--nice and rugged, but parts always got damaged during bouts. 

_____The synthetic skin of his hands still oily, he picked up the chipped, coin-sized gear and got up from the stool--walking over to the right side of this noisy garage. Over there was big-bellied male cyborg in similar coveralls, standing in front of a table and looking over one of several wide sheets of thick paper--sky-blue lines on an oil-smudged white. Those sheets of paper were the schematics to Gogam's electrical system. 

_____"_Hey Gusto_," said Scotch above the sudden sound of a spinning turbo-drill. Gusto turned his head to the left--looking at Scotch. "_This gear's chipped and pitted. How do I fix it? Can we machine it back into shape?_"

__

_____Gusto carefully took the proffered gear and looked it over--his brows furrowed. Hmmph… "This is a one-inch toothed gear. Take it to Lu-Anne. She'll know how to machine it back into shape. If not, bring it back to me! I'll see what we can do for replacements_._" He handed it back. 

______Whir-r-r-r…! _"_Thanks, boss!"_ shouted Scotch above another bit of racket. Gusto then returned to his overview of schematics. Where was Lu-Anne? Oh yeah…. She was one of the few female mechanics there were on this team--sitting over there. He walked around the gigantic waist-high platform where big metal-bodied Gogam was lying down to get to the other side of this garage. 

_____Lu-Anne, a metal-type cyborg, was dressed in coveralls like all the other mechanics--though she wore a leotard top with her coveralls. Her dark hair was held back with a strand of wire. Usually, her working area was that bench over there, set in front of a clear-shielded multi-purpose device for cleaning and fixing small parts. To her left was a small stool with a towel atop it--several small parts needing cleaning. 

_____Scotch approached. She turned off the machine and set another cleaned part on a tray to her right_. "_That's a one-inch hydraulics radial gear. I'll clean it as soon as I do these other parts… Come back in twenty-six minutes_._" 

_____ Nodding, Scotch turned around and went walking back to his own work area. Somebody tapped him on the left shoulder. "Hey Scotch, some guys in suits want to talk to you," he was told above the noise. "They're waiting outside_._" 

_____What the…? Aw, great! And he thought his day was going so well. He wiped his greasy synthetic hands on his coveralls and began walking slump-shouldered towards the exit door. It was some guys from the Black Market… Things were going to be bad. Was he going to disappear too? They could have at least let him finish this day at work.

_____Out in the hall, there were three similar-looking female cyborgs waiting for him--dressed in dark dress-jackets and pleated skirts--dark stockings over their legs, dark shoes to match. The only difference between these businesslike women were their hairstyles. The female with blonde hair put a hand on one of his shoulders and grinned.

_____She had sharp metal teeth… "Hello, Scotch. We have heard that you saw something last night." The grip on the shoulder tightened just a little. "Come with us. We want to ask you a few questions." Then that metal hand on his shoulder turned him around. The three women in dark business clothes took him farther along the hall and to one of the garages not being used today. 

_____ The one with fluffy red hair opened the door and gestured the way in while the one with straight dark hair _flicked_ on the lights. In here was another garage, except with a different layout. They found a short stool and sat him down…hard. Seated on the low stool, he had to look up at the three females. One of them smiled that piranha's grin of hers--if anyone these days knew what a piranha was. 

_____While the blonde-haired her solid hands on his shoulders, the dark-haired one stepped in front of him. She stood with her hands behind her back, her feet together--looking deceptively prim. "_So_…_!_" she said brightly, then smiled without showing teeth. All the same, Scotch had a glimpse of those sharpened things in her pretty mouth. He wondered how these three managed to talk normally with mouths full of such sharp and evil-looking things. "Sleep well after those troublemakers stopped the Adversary? Since you've had such a good night's sleep, tell me who was there to stop the gigantic robot-beast when it showed itself. Describe who and what you saw there, please. That will help you out a lot.."

_____Gripping this low stool, eyes wide, Scotch answered as best he could given his situation. "Ma'am, it went like this. After that first big explosion, I ran down to the first floor of the apartment building. You know… The foyer. I looked out the window and saw… _That _big thing. I was thinking, _Gosh, I'm not going out there!_ Then there was this really _loud _sound of a car with lots of torque coming down the street. Some guys came out of the beat-up old vehicle, some farmers, holding some of the biggest weapons I've ever seen before! 

______"They started yelling and making good-time sounds when they aimed at the big thing and started _shooting _at it! I was scared silly, ma'am. I expected the Adversary to stomp over to those crazy farmers with the rifles and kill them all. Thought they were making it _mad. _They just kept shooting at the thing. There was a funny kind of explosion when they hit its big gun-hand thing, and then the big stupid thing fell backwards into the sewers. The farmers sprayed some graffiti next to the big hole in the street and drove off… Their graffiti said something about rebels having saved the neighborhood." 

_____Scotch was going to mention the part of the spray-painted message about the Black Market not being there and all. He decided against doing that because he did _not _want to anger these three women. They probably already knew, anyway. Offending them just might not be a good idea at this time--or any other time. 

_____"_Hmm-m-m…_" went the one with straight dark hair. She began to slowly turn around, looking at the racks of tools and machines in this big underground workspace. "That sounds about right--a bunch of crazy farmers drive up out of nowhere, with big strange weapons no one ever saw before, then start blasting up the place--luckily sending the Adversary back to the sewers. Were they really lucky or just plain stupid? Dumb luck! How did a bunch of gun-crazy runaway farmers from the wastelands stop that thing?"

_____If his synthetic skin could give off perspiration, his forehead would have been beaded with small worried sweat-droplets. He thought about his answer, thought about the sheer power and bulk of the thing. "Well ma'am… It's kind of hard to say. I don't know how they stopped that thing… About two-thirds of the monster's weight is some kind of alloyed armor from the times of the War--when there used to be space-ships. And it's got more than one internal power source--some kinds of nuclear batteries I've never even heard of before. Even if the thing had a head, I don't even think that knocking it off would stop the thing 'cause it's got more than one computer-brain." 

_____They were staring; he realized that he was rambling… Well, so long as he kept talking and feeding them information, they wouldn't hurt him. "What I'm trying to say is, ma'am, maybe those farmers just got _lucky. _I don't know if the Adversary _can _be stopped. I want to kill that thing… It killed my brother. But what can I do now?" 

…

3.

…

_____The day was moving on into noon-time, getting along as usual. There was always the burningly hot sun overhead, blazing yellow-hot and heating the city while machine-buildings churned and thrummed. All the gray and red-colored smoke billowed up to the sky, mingling together to make for a slight haze. Heavy trucks still drove along these hot city streets, their heavy electromechanical engines rumbling. 

_____That bright yellow of noon-time became afternoon, eventually. All of the rumbling and churning from the machine-buildings slowed down, the billowing toxic smoke from the chimneys slowed to puffs. Doors opened, and droves of cyborgs and fleshies walked out of the buildings and into the sidewalks. With exhausted relief, everybody knew that they were done with yet another day of work.

_____Time to party… A group of six metal-bodied factory workers went to their usual hang-out spot--the end of a back alley, set near an abandoned industrial warehouse. They had drinks with them, along with some newsprint to read and some more newsprint to burn. The huge building of corrugated tin and steel beams was too rusted and wasted to be restored. The Black Market was probably waiting for that thing to collapse before they did anything with the real estate: demolition cost money.

_____They set up the old metal barrel at the mouth of the alley and some old chairs they had stashed back here. They set to drinking…and set to talking, reading the newsprint and talking about the problems around here. Liam screwed a light bulb into the alley's light fixture set in the wall when the slanting sunlight became too dim.

_____Talking and drinking, drinking and laughing, the cyborgs kept chatting it up and having a generally good time as sunlight began to dim, going down and away--making for those deep orange-red tones of sunset. When the cold night winds began to blow, it was time to light the barrel. Jimmy set down the news printout the was reading and took out a small cylindrical lighter--which he used to light up the waste-paper and old synthetic wood-chunks in the metal barrel. The result was heat and light against the oncoming chilliness of the night. 

______Click-CLICK! Squee-eak… _Everyone went quiet. They had heard a door opening somewhere nearby--or they thought they did: hearing a metal door being opened on rusty hinges. Murray and Joel went out of the alley and looked around. Of course there were no metal doors nearby. They've used this alley opening for years, even years before Zalem blew itself up. There were no doors around here. So where did the sound come from?

_____When everybody went back into the mouth of the alley, back to their hang-out spot, a strange man stepped out from around the right corner. He was tall and dressed in a red-colored synthetic-silk suit, his blond hair was combed straight up in a silky bouffant. His bushy yellow eyebrows were above his brown eyes, eyebrows thick enough to also be combed. Brown eyes? Or were they _red_ eyes?

_____They had never seen that man before. Working and living around here for so long, this colloquial group of six had thought they had seen _everybody _by now. They were wrong now, of course: the man in the red business suit was certainly a newbie to this area… He looked around, put his hands in his pockets, then walked around the burning barrel and left through the alley--going out to the city streets. He had an appointment to keep. 

… 

_____After Aikasa was done singing for the day, the restaurant was a bit less crowded. The girl's blissful performances were wonderful, but very short--only eighteen minutes at a time. Some of the crowd was already going to where Aikasa's talent agent was driving her next. There were more seats now--enough tables open for Dr. Sera to have a place to herself in the corner. Her glass of red wine was on the table, one-third empty, while she read newsprint by the light of the light-fixture overhead. 

_____After reading another article, she set down the multi-folded ream of paper and put her hands flat on the table--sitting up with knees together. She spreading her fingers... Her synthetic skin was smooth and without flaws. Flexing her fingers, the synthetic skin around her metal knuckles stretched like rubber. 

_____These were robotic doll-hands. Dr. Sera again realized that her synthetic body was that of a life-sized human doll. Her clothes--white blouse and slacks beneath a long lab-coat--were clothes for the life-sized doll-woman. And her fluffy red hair, probably her most dollish feature. She was a brain in a toy body!

_____Smirking to herself, she reached for the glass of wine and drank some. Setting it down, someone in a garishly styled outfit quickly pulled out the seat opposite her at this table and sat down in it. Looking up, she saw that the man's outfit was a red business-suit. His blonde hair was combed up from his head, and his eyebrows were also odd. So were his eyes…

_____Looking at him, she asked, "Excuse me, but do you know what being rude is? It is when a person steps beyond the boundaries of decency and interferes with someone else's relaxation. Or do you think you're so important that you can interfere with anyone's recreational time? You may be important wherever it is you came from, but here in the city, we have manners! It keeps people from getting killed for being rude."

_____Leaning forward with jacket-covered atop the table, the man in the red suit looked into Sera's eyes. "_Where I come from, there is nobody…_" he said in a smoky voice, barely audible above the low din of the restaurant. "_You, or one of you wanted me to come. We come when properly invited_." 

_____Dr. Sera thought she misheard what he was saying. Where he comes from, there is…nobody? "I'm sorry, but what you're saying doesn't make much sense," she said. "What do you mean, 'properly invited'? As for 'one of us' inviting you, I do not see how that can be true…because there is only one _me, _and I do not recall inviting anyone anywhere. At least, there is one of me _now_." She said that and thought to herself, _See, I can talk in puzzles, too._

_____ Rubbing his hands together and still leaning forward, the man in the red suit responded, "_Do you know_ _what you know? I…believe that you know…and you _know_ things that would open your mind to what I would say. It can make sense if you're careful._"

_____This was quite an interesting man…even if his suit did give off an odd scent of cinnamon--able to be smelled above the other smells of food and drink in this restaurant. Or maybe the olfactory receptors in her sinuses were malfunctioning. "Really?" she asked. "What is there to say to me? Then, I take it you have known of my technological attempts at progress and scientific endeavor. What should I be open-minded about?"

_____Rubbing his hands along the tabletop, the man in the red suit stared deeper into Dr. Sera's eyes and said, "_What if…scientists performed lots of little experiments that tugged at the fabric of reality itself? And next to that, what if…burning nuclear fireballs made for bends in time and space--stretching and altering the flows of karma? This reality is not all that there is…"_

_____Dr. Sera didn't fully understand the man's insane gibberish, but she had the idea that he was talking about metaphysics--the science of reality. Dr. Sera had dabbled in metaphysics once. That was especially true when she made her dark compact pistol. To make it, she used ultra-powerful electromagnetic fields, tachyon streams, and other forces of matter and energy… Making and firing the dark pistol sent material objects out of reality. As Dr. Sera remembered this, the man in the red suit smiled as if he knew what was going on in her mind. 

_____Then, when he resumed talking, it was as if the rest of the restaurant faded into a dark background… Dr. Sera's attention was now focused on the man in the red suit, sitting across from her. Nothing else seemed to exist beyond the pool of light above this table. 

__

_____"What am I…talking about? There is light and there is darkness. 'But also, there is darkness. Not all places are in the light--where everything is orderly and makes sense. What was there before the universe came into existence? What is that place still beyond the light of reality? 'Let there be light!' Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…"

_____The "light of reality?" This was finally too much crazy talk for the female scientist. She wanted to shout, _Will you please make sense? _But she found that she couldn't talk at all right now, her throat not working, as if her synthetic body only allowed her to breathe. Something wasn't right here. In a way, though, some of what he was saying made some kind of sense.

__

_____"There is still a dark place beyond the light--a place dimly lit from shades of reality," he continued. "_It is dark, but there are things in it--things made real and given life when shreds of light shine in from those little rips in the fabric of reality. The fabric of the universe can flex and bend, yet those strange machines buried in the ground keep those rips and bends open. The strange machines of your spaceship engines were buried and almost forgotten. The effects remain. And you know it, using that little gun of yours!"_

_____That's it! Dr. Sera's pretty face became _angry_, and she _slapped _both hands atop the table--making for a loud noise. "_Ooh-h-h! Will you get away from me, you crazy thing!_" she shouted, her eyes squinted shut. "_I don't even want to hear your crazy talk anymore! Just start making normal sense or just go away!_" 

_____When she opened her eyes again, everything snapped back into normalcy--with people looking at her. The restaurant had gone quiet, everyone's eyes looking in the direction of the red-haired scientist-woman. What was _that _about? More importantly, who was she yelling at?

_____She looked around. The man in the red suit was gone. Embarrassed, she looked down at her smooth-skinned hands again--the skin too smooth to be real. But who could she have been talking to? Why else had she just slapped the table? Somehow, she had managed not to spill her red wine. Or maybe she had just imagined the man in the red suit? She had only recombined her brain several weeks ago; there was really no telling what could happen sometimes. She could have been hallucinating… No, he was too solid to have been a hallucination.

_____The other people at the other tables looked away and began talking among themselves. Was that scientist-woman crazy from work-stress? No, that couldn't be it. Some people _definitely _saw a man sitting at her table--some blond-haired guy in a strange-looking red business suit. He also had the strangest hairstyle they'd ever seen in their lives… Hell, the guy's fashion sense was so freaky that he probably wasn't even human. 

…

4.

…

_____After leaving a tip for the waitress, Dr. Sera stepped out of the restaurant into the night-darkened sidewalk--in a sort of daze. Standing here on the sidewalk with people walking by, she saw the harsh glare of the streetlights flicker on, and the neon signs of local shops and restaurant seemed brighter compared to the to the oncoming darkness of the city night. Cars and trucks rolled by in the streetlamp-and-neon-lit darkness, full of people now out to have a good time since the work-day was done. 

_____Well, the day was over for most people, at least. She still had things to do now, though her professional work-hours were done. Since one of her workers was killed by the Adversary, there was even more work to be done--like finding another member of the Black Market trustworthy enough to handle her research facility's income and organize the maintenance personnel. She was a research scientist, not an accountant! All she wanted to do was to develop cyborg technologies, like synthetic-flesh type bodies and figuring out how to better use nanotechnology. She also wanted to catch up on her newsprint reading…

_____ She glimpsed an eye-catching petite figure in the pedestrian traffic across the street. There was only one girl in town with that kind of hair and a red scarf, worn with blouse and shorts. Dr. Sera especially recognized the scarf she'd made for the girl. "_Hello-o-o!_" she shouted, smiling and waving to the petite pale-haired girl across the street. But she kept walking.. 

_____There was nothing to do but try and cross the street. Thank goodness traffic was reduced: almost no trucks at night. Still, city people drove like motorball players--revving and dodging. In timed dead and gone, there were things like traffic signs, traffic lights, speed limits and just _traffic laws _in general. Nowadays, driving was dangerous. Crossing the street was even more dangerous than that. 

_____Using the agility of synthetic muscle tissue and computer-enhanced reflexes, she dashed and weaved through the chaotic traffic. She ran while making sudden right and left turns without stopping. Even if she had been hit, titanium bones didn't break so easily; the front hoods of cars would be damaged before her metal skeleton was. Besides, she was too quick to have been hit. 

_____Skidding on her rubber-soled footwear on the sidewalk across the street (and ignoring a few amazed stares of cyborgs and fleshies), Dr. Sera again tried to get Aikasa's attention. "_Hello there!_" she shouted again. Aikasa paused and half-turned and looked back as the female scientist caught up. "It's about time you noticed me! For a moment, I thought you were ignoring me."

_____ The girl shook her head and looked up at her. "No, Dr. Sera, I wouldn't have done that to you," she said above the noise of the trucks and cars, the walking feet of the people on this sunset-colored city sidewalk. Then she looked across the street. "It's just that… Something…" _Something was…_

_____"_My goodness! The noise is inconvenient! Let's find a place to talk,_" she said, holding out her right hand. Aikasa took hold of Dr. Sera's hand and allowed herself to be led to one of the many store-front restaurants and cafes around here. One of the cafes had glass picture-windows, giving a comfortable view of the inside--a few window-side tables available. "_Let's go in here! I'll pick up the tab. My treat!_" Nodding once, Aikasa was led into the café. 

…

_____Inside, it was certainly a lot less noisy than the outside. The sound of vehicles and sidewalk crowd of cyborgs and fleshies was just a hum outside the windows. Soon after the two sat down at this window-side table, a waiter in black slacks and shirt approached the table--his metal hands exposed beyond the sleeves. "A polite evening greeting to you, ladies," he said in a cool voice. "What is wanted, please?"

_____Dr. Sera's eyes rolled up for a second before she answered. "Um-m-m… Give me some coffee, a pitcher of the darkest and sweetest kind you have. I don't want it extra sweet, just as sweet as you make it--plenty of glucose. What about you, Aikasa?" 

_____"I would like a tall glass of water," she answered in that beautiful voice of hers, fingering her scarf. "And do you have any unflavored sushi? Fish doesn't…quite taste right when people add flavors to it. Hmm-m-m… Yes, that is what I want."

_____The cyborg-waiter in black noted down their orders on a pink square notepad, and Dr. Sera gave him a large-denomination credit-chip. It was twice what their order came to, but she had credits to spare: The customers who came to her medical facility, executives of the Black Market, paid her plenty. She could be afford to be a little generous--and maybe a little careless--with her money now: a change from when she first came back to this city after a time at that wasteland farm.

_____ Accepting the credit-chip and bowing, the waiter walked away to fulfill their orders. "So… How was your day, Aikasa?" asked the doctor, tilting her head to the side sympathetically. " You look tired. Did you have to do a lot of singing again?"

_____"Yes, maybe a little bit," answered the girl, sounding a little wistful. "But my talent agent let me take a nap between performances today." She then slapped her hands atop the table, her big pretty green eyes suddenly sparkling with anger. "And would you believe it! Some drunk bullies tried to take my scarf! This one you made just for me!"

_____ "_Really?_" went Dr. Sera, leaning back. The waiter brought their orders back: a pitcher and mug of dark coffee for the scientist; two glasses of water and unflavored sushi for the little singer. When he walked away, they resumed talking. "So… I hope you hurt them! Goodness, and it's just when I thought the city was getting a little better since Zalem's out of the picture. I hope you hurt those bullies and taught them to never threaten _you_ again!"

_____"Yes… I made sure that they learned," she answered, thinking of their dead bodies. _Gya-a-ah! _"Hmm?" went Aikasa as she raised a tall glass of water to her lips, using both hands. _Look at me, you ignorant people! _For several seconds straight, she drank from the tall glass of water, taking in half of it while her eyes were looking to the right. _Ha-ha-ha…! _Setting it down on this table, she turned her head--looking out this café window. "Oh, that's sad…"

______You fools! Pay attention to details! _"What's sad?" asked Dr. Sera, following Aikasa's gaze. There was someone outside of here, someone ranting and raving. He was drawing a crowd of interested pedestrians. A lot of people went crazy in the city--going a little insane in all kinds of ways. With some people, though, the insanity was more entertaining…like with that crazy guy dancing on the sidewalk, right now.

_____Annoyed, Dr. Sera gently patted the table. "Wait here, Aikasa. I'm going outside to see what's interrupting our relaxation-time. And maybe I can convince him to find some other place to go crazy--before a member of the Black Market shoots him for being a troublemaker." Indeed, irritating important members of that p5! once-criminal syndicate was a sure way of suicide. 

…

_____Again outside the café, she went over to where a small crowd was forming--interrupting the flow of sidewalk traffic. People looked at her as she gently pushed them aside. But then they saw that she must be someone important--given how she was dressed in the white professional clothes of a cyber-doctor. They let her through.

_____The man, a fleshie wearing crumpled business clothes, looked and sounded deranged. His black business jacket was half-off, and his white buttoned shirt was half-undone. The slacks must have been well-tailored and professionally wrinkle-free once. Now, they were bunched-up and looking sloppy. 

"_You don't understand! The_ _space invaders…are…here!_ They're _space monsters_, most of them are evil red muscular midgets with bald heads and dressed in breech-cloths… Somebody let them into our world, and now they're showing up all over the place! Most people can't see 'em, but everybody knows what they do!"

_____"Calm down, pal! There ain't any such thing as space monsters," shouted a man in blue coveralls. "The only monsters we got around here are some messed-up mutants and metal-freaks…like my friends and me. See?" For emphasis, he raised his left hand and wriggled it--the metal joints articulating. People laughed. "Yeah, the monsters are here alright, pal. _We're _the monsters! R-r-rargh!" 

_____"And _that's your ignorance!_" shouted the deranged man, hopping around on one foot, his jacket still half-off. "The space monsters are in the breeze, _on_ _the prowl. _You wouldn't even know a space-monster if you saw one! _R-r-raagh!_ " With a growl, the deranged man in the sloppy business suit finally threw off--tore off--his jacket: revealing a holstered pistol. 

_____Everyone went still. There was no telling what one of those crazies will do with a gun… That deranged fleshie took the handgun out of the holster, then put the barrel to the right side of his own head. He turned to look right at Dr. Sera. "_Thanks for the ride here, _doctor!_ Thanks…for the ride!_" He winked at her before finally squeezing the trigger. 

_____People turned and ran, everyone except Dr. Sera. All that they saw was that, instead of there being a nasty death-scene, something crazier happened. Some kind of glowing reddish-orange haze had completely covered over the deranged man in the ruined business suit--a glow that seemed brighter than the streetlights. The air suddenly heated up, maybe from the radiation given off by that creepy orange haze. Nobody wanted to stick around to find out what happened after that!

_____One person stayed behind, having seen the sunset-colored haze before. When it the orange haze faded, Dr. Sera noticed something, something small and dark by the light of the streetlamps and pouring out from the café. She walked over to the thing on the sidewalk and knelt--picked it up. How could it be…?

_____The female scientist picked it up. She recognized it as surely as she recognized her own face. The dark, compact pistol's unusual heaviness was familiar. The trigger was its only moving part, and the thing seemed to be made out of one solid piece of well-shaped dark metal. No, it wasn't merely metal with a dark coating. She knew the metal itself was dark as a side-effect of the weapon's properties. She knew this because she was the one who made this weapon, the dark compact pistol…

…

_____Back in the café, Aikasa asked if she had solved the problem. There was a lot of noise--and that horrible flash of light! Dr. Sera said that the problem solved itself and gently changed the subject. While she and Aikasa talked, there was now the hard sleek lump of metal squeezed into the left pocket of her close-fitting white pants--the shape hidden by the looseness of her labcoat. It was almost as if she could feelthe karmic radiation given off by the still-warm tip of the barrel, pressed close to her left thigh by the tight material of her clothes. 

…

5.

…

_____An hour into the night, and Patrick's main restaurant was still full of people. Though Aikasa wasn't here to sing right now, the band that did her backup melodies were--playing out instrumental renditions of some of Aikasa's recent songs. Though the little pale-haired beauty wasn't here herself, the gentle angelic melody set everyone in a pleasant mood: The melody reminded them of her. There was no hope of hearing her sweetly sad and gentle voice now; she was probably worn out and sleeping wherever she called home.

_____"…So we just stood there while that _hu-u-uge_ thing just sort of _exploded _out of the freakin' street!" said the short, muscular teenage boy in red coveralls and orange tee-shirt--his brown hair loose and wild. He was sitting at this table with three of his friends--his current girlfriend and another couple. A tall mug full of some strange red drink bubbled in front of him--frothing and foaming. "_Bla-a-am_. Great big chunks of the street and parts of people went _fly-y-ying! _Man, you shoulda _been _there!"

_____As if to match his exuberance, the red drink seemed to become even more frothier. Nobody really knew what he was drinking this time, and nobody really bothered to ask. There were plenty of exotic drinks to be had around the city--given all the tens of thousands kinds of beverage chemical combinations available. Some of the drinks made for varying kinds of drunkenness, and some drinks could kill anyone but the hardiest of cyborgs. This teenage boy was determined to drink every kind of drink ever made in the city. The fact that new drinks were being invented all the time was not a deterrent to his massive (and thoroughly intoxicating) goal in life. 

_____"Are you _crazy_?" went the female cyborg sitting opposite him. Her feminine metal body was tinted blue--dressed in pants and half-unzipped synthetic leather jacket. She had her dark hair worn up in a bun. "You could've been _killed _by that thing! I heard that some scavengers found it in the desert and tried to get it started with batteries. Then it woke up and started killing people. It's killed, like, a _hundred _people already."

_____"Didn't the Black Market tell people to stay away from that metal beast?" chided another teenage boy, dressed in jeans and tee-shirt, with synthetic-leather jacket over. His short-cut blond hair was as careful and as conservative as his attitude. He had to get his eyes replaced because of a factory accident. "I've sometimes had to ask myself if you were suicidal…or something like that. If you want to kill yourself, there are easier and more dramatic ways." 

_____"Suicide? Death? _Hell_, I'm not scared of some messed-up old machine somebody probably made in some garage!" bragged the short, muscular teenage boy. He took another gulp from that odd frothing drink of his. "The Black Market is probably a bunch of sissies! They may be too weak to…" _Swoosh-wham!_

_____No one at this table was really sure _what _the heck just happened. One second, Lex here was talking about how he wasn't scared of the Adversary and how the Black Market was too weak. The next, there was this dark-suited blur of motion--knocking him out of his chair. There was a foot on his neck, and a gleaming silvery blade was at his nose. Despite his apparent peril, he was smiling. Part of the drink must have been liquid courage or something. 

_____"_What did you say!_" shouted Mr. Muyamoto. As usual, the Black Market executive was dressed in a dark business suit, his straight dark hair cut short at the sides. In his right metal hand, he clutched the grip of his blade, waving the tip of the edged weapon inches from Lex's nose. The entire restaurant was silent. Nobody moved; everyone was looking over here. "_Say…that…again!_ Do you claim that the Black Market is full of cowards? Speak up! Now that you have an audience, let them hear what you have said of the Black Market!"

_____When the shoe eased up on his throat, Lex sucked in another breath and spoke up. "Yeah, I said it! The Black Market can't keep us safe from the Adversary. At least when Zalem ruled the world, they had machines and stuff they could use to stop big crazy monsters. And the bounty hunters didn't even _need _guns."

_____"Hmm! So you say…we are an ineffective organization, unable to prevent harm from coming to the common people of this city?" asked Mr. Muyamoto loudly. "Despite _all _that we have done for you, despite the stability and easygoing freedoms you now enjoy, are you _still_ ungrateful? Though your lives are now so easy that you only work a _third _of the time you once did under Zalem's control, though the goods and luxuries of your work now flow right back to you, instead of going up to a rich city in a sky… You are _still _not thankful to us?"

_____"If you hadn't been friggin' interrupted me, friggin' _eavesdropping, _you would've heard the rest of what I had to say!" grunted the muscular boy on the restaurant floor. "But if you wanna put it _that _way… Yeah, you guys with your fancy business suits and your guns can't stop that monster."

_____The cyborg in the business suit stared at the muscular fleshie-boy, meeting his stare. There was no fear in the boy's dark eyes--just angry conviction. It was either bravery, stupidity, or intoxication that made him so bold. Yet the boy spoke his true beliefs--a slowly spreading belief among the people. The people were beginning to believe that not even the enforcers of the Black Market could stop the Adversary.

______Swish-swish! _Mr. Muyamoto sheathed his sword with two machine-quick motions, the weapon disappearing beneath his dark business jacket. Still, he kept his right shoe where it was--on the boy's neck. "If you lack confidence the Black Market, then I must act in a way to restore it. I will act honorably this night. I, Muyamoto Hiro, executive of the Black Market, _will_ hunt the Adversary." That said, he lifted his foot from the boy's neck and began to stride towards the door. The other four people in business suits followed him out. 

…

_____Mr. Muyamoto and his other enforcers drove around, asked around, their car driving through the city night. And within exactly sixty minutes of this driving and questioning, they found it. Finding a ten-foot metal monster wasn't too hard after all. Its big left claw-hand glinted with the fluids of murdered cyborgs and the tip of its gun-arm glowed red from recent firing. The thing was stomping its way along a sidewalk on its thick metal hooves--electronic growling coming from the analog speakers high up in its chest.

_____The sleek dark car scraped to a halt in front of the Adversary, the rubber tires making a sound like a scream. All five of the enforcers stepped out of the car and onto the streetlamp-illuminated sidewalk, guns ready. Mr. Muyamoto had a thick blocky pistol in his left hand and blade in his right. He raised the blade, glinting in the light. 

______Swoo-sh…_ A mighty sweep of its massive left arm, extending its three-tined claw-hand, and one of the enforcers was killed in one blow, her expensively clad metal body landing on the other side of the street. Everyone else responded with gunfire--aiming for the jagged upper-part of the chunk armored body where the armor hadn't been closed up correctly. 

_____They must have done some kind of damage. Some sparks sprayed out from where they had fired, along with a few palls of smoke. The Adversary _grow-w-wled _and shook. Still, it did not fall. It did not stop.

_____Moving unbelievably fast for something so huge, the Adversary then hopped forward and finished off the fight with just a few more sweeps of that mighty arm with the huge three-tined claw-hand. Its synthesized voice boomed from its speakers, growling and snarling like the beast it was as it slashed and slashed and…

…

_____Aikasa was so small and pretty, so glowingly beautiful with the spotlight shining on her white gown and the pale-blonde hair, her face full of peace and beauty. Her voice floated and filled the room wish such wonderful dreaminess. Everyone listened, feeling the bliss fill their ears and setting their spirits. Listening to her sing made everything seem okay.

…

__

Why…did…you go-o-o?

Why…did…you…turn…

…a-way from me?

…

Whe-e-en all the world 

…seemed to sing

Why…! Why…did you go…? 

…

Was it me?

Was it you?

Que-stions in a world of blue…

…

How can a heart

that's filled with love…

Start…to…cry?

…

Whe-e-e-n ALL the world

seemed so-o-o right

How…can…love…die?

…

Was it me?

Was it you?

Que-stions in a wo-o-rld of blue…

…

_____Back out here in the dark streets… When it was over, after the Adversary had went back down into the sewers and left destruction and death in its wake, a curious group came over to see the remains. They saw the bodies of defeated enforcers, lying still and sparking in the gloom of the city street and sidewalk. The people of this neighborhood said that the Black Market was full of weak cowards and bullies, a bunch of rich people using guns to keep everyone poor and humble. Though this act showed that the Black Market's enforcers were courageous and willing to fight, it was still true that they could not stop the Adversary. But, then again, who or what could stop the Adversary?

…

_____In the pub… They saw some tears come from the girl's big pretty eyes. Several wet drops slid down her smooth cheeks, dropping onto her red scarf. She had stopped singing for some seconds as the melody played. When she resumed, her voice was still smooth and beautiful, but full of deeper misery and sadness. 

…

__

Whe-e-en DID the day

with a-a-all it's li-i-ight 

…tu-u-urn in-to night?

…

When a-a-a-all the world 

…seemed to-o-o sing!

WHY…? Why…did you go?

…

Was it me?

Was it you?

…

Que-stions in a wo-o-orld of blue

…Que-stions in a wo-o-orld of blue


	9. Chapter Nine

__

All The Colors of Yesterday

Chapter 9 

by Elliot Bowers

__

…

_____Swish… The metal hatchet came up, while the man-sized android teddybear remained on its cotton-padded knees, bowing its big fluffy brown head. Standing close was the girl…a dark and angry look in her ceramic eyes while she stood poised, her slim arms and hands holding up the sharp-headed metal object. Sneering, she tensed, then brought down the metal hatchet with both hands gripping… 

__

_____Swish-clunk! That sharpened, diamond-headed hatchet head bit through the cottony exterior of the fluffy brown head, cutting into the tin skull beneath. The teddy bear was designed to be hugged and befriended, not to be abused with weapons. 

_____The damage was brutal. With a buzz of cut circuits, it shuddered and fell over, twitching on the smooth black floor--sparks beginning to char some of the cottony exterior. The girl's eyes went wide, taking in the sight of this toy-thing she had broken, seen by the glow of the video monitors on the wall. 

_____Somehow, she didn't think that was enough! Again, using her inhuman strength, the synthetic girl again raised the metal hatchet. It went up…raised in the air…and then brought back _down_ with terrible speed. _Chumk! _Again, the sharpened head of the diamond-edged hatchet bit into the head of the already broken teddy bear. This time, it went deeper, cleaving new damage. 

_____And she hit again… And again… To the shoulders, the chest, the belly… She was getting into it, her eyes wide and glinting with something like madness. The hatchet came up again, her body tensed, and she struck yet again! It was a sadistic rhythm noted by a brutal and steady beat--each beat making for another fraction of destruction. The girl was so immersed in her activity, destroying the robotic teddy bear, that she failed to notice the view of a left-side monitor--a dark figure walking out of one glass-doored luxury home, then appearing on another monitor--walking into the next building. 

_____Some would think that a human being wouldn't be capable of such cruelty. Yet human beings have killed and mutilated others before. It was a sign of insanity and murderous intent. For the synthetic girl of this palace, however, it was simply the way she was. She had to assert authority over her kingdom. And to do that, her subjects had to be _punished_.

_____When she was done, there was nothing but a battered metal hulk with stuffing everywhere. Finally relaxing, holding the hatchet in her left hand, she kicked some of the stuffing, the remains. Then she pivoted to face the metal-bodied robotic maids standing stiffly along the right-side wall--pointing her hatchet in their general direction. She also knew that her message, in the form of electronic signals from her electronic mind, was being transmitted throughout all of this dead city in the sky. 

_____Maintenance and security robots everywhere throughout the sleek, beautiful city stopped to listen. They were standing along the pristine pedestrian-friendly streets and in sleek office-like towers of glass and steel, in the park-like gardens… Most were not moving anyway. But those that were, they ceased their operation to tune in to the network message from their mistress. 

_____Bzzt… "_Do you know what I've just done to Teddy-Poo? Yeah, you do… And if you keep messing up, I'm gonna make the same thing happen to all of you, one at a time! I don't know which one of you eight-bit stupid-heads is messing up, letting that creepy old stranger come up into my city, but you're not gonna let it happen again! The next time I see that guy dancing along my streets, walking into my buildings, I'm gonna mess up two more of you!" Thump! She again kicked the remains of the giant robotic teddybear. "Now clean up this mess!_" Bzzt! Hiss… 

_____Showing no fear or remorse on their plastic faces, the gynoid-maids stiffly moved over to the wide pile of scattered fluff and steel. One of them opened the door while the others knelt to gathered up large armfuls of the teddy bear. It took two of them to lift up the mutilated metal robotic frame. When all of the large pieces were removed from the floor, two of the maids licked the floor clean with their artificial tongues. 

…

_____A-a-ahh yes! It was another day in the city. It was noon-time, and everyone was on their lunch-break. In the downtown area, cyborgs and fleshies were sitting outside of shops and Black-Market office buildings, enjoying all the kinds of food they ate and the drinks. The sky overhead was a nice pretty blue, the sun seemed to be just so bright and warm, and the day itself was so pleasant and smiley! If birds hadn't gone extinct, they would be singing--perched atop buildings, neon signs and on streetlamps, lamps left dark during the day.

_____With the music playing and the people sitting outside, there was a sort of celebratory feeling in the city air! Cyborgs laughed easily and drank beer with their metal hands while admiring the bodies of beautiful people who walked by. Outdoor cafes were doing brisk business while some trucks eased slowly by. There was also an awful lot of air pollution. That was beside the point. This wasn't some kind of holiday. There were no holidays in the city! It was just a kind of…feel-good sort of day. Too bad this feel-good sort of ambiance didn't last. 

______Kablam-m-m! _The Adversary exploded its way up to the surface, the city street. _Oh no, not again_, thought some of the city people as they all started to run away. By now, everybody knew about the Adversary--either by rumor or by seeing it in action. How many people were killed by that thing now?

_____If the monster looked bad before, it looked even more sinister now. The garish red-and-white paint-job given it weeks ago was beginning to streak in places, the paint ruined by toxic pollutants in the sewers, and the chunky metal torso now had black patches and pitted marks where ceramic bullets and other kinds of projectiles had hit it. Dark stains of cyborg circulatory fluids now permanently stained its huge claw-hand. _Clomp-clomp-clomp…_ Its metal hooves made those stomping noises as it began to stride towards a building. 

_____Yeah, if bounty hunters were still around, they'd be able to stop that monster-thing! They would dash right up to that monster, leap up and sink their weapons right into its optical sensors or something before lopping off those construction-machine arms. Then they would cut off its machine legs. Even if the Adversary didn't seem to have a head, the bounty hunters would've found a way to stop it. What was that? Some of the Black Market enforcers are ex-bounty hunters? So what!

_____It didn't even bother to try and open the glass doors to that nine-story office building over there. Heck, it just strode right on into the first floor--chunks of annealed glass and strips of steel tinkling everywhere. There were screams coming from inside and some people tried to make their way out before something… _Fwoosh! _A fluorescent pillar of plasma energy burst out the top of the nine-story structure. That was a blast of energy from the Adversary's arm-cannon, no doubt: absolutely _holing_ the building from the inside. 

_____With a terrible roar of smoke and chaos, the building came crashing down, all nine stories of it. The roaring and the crashing of concrete and steel drowned out the screams. None of the human workers could have survived that. Even a few cyborgs would be lucky enough to get out of the rubble alive.

_____When the massive pile of rubble settled, the dust clearing, the Adversary freed itself with a mighty sweep of its claw-hand. This metal-bodied beast emerged from all the destruction and all of the chaos with no new dents at all. Muttering darkly in a robotic growl, the thing stomped a part of the street and again exited to below. There was no telling where it would go next to find whatever "Target" it was seeking.

…

2.

…

_____Dr. Sera had long gotten used to the loud roar of the big engine and the vibrating hum of the big tires on the city streets. At first, she was somewhat against the idea of riding in this big and rough-looking wasteland vehicle--what Scotch called a "dune buggy," now fitted with smooth wheels for urban driving. Even adjusted down as far as it was, the seatbelts still didn't feel secure enough. This seat was designed for a much larger person than Dr. Sera--someone three times the width of her body. She sometimes had to hold on to part of the vehicle's tube-framework as Scotch made these sharp turns--wheels screeching and heavy electric motor thrumming. Earlier, he had told her the power supply was micro fusion batteries and radiochemical generators wired together in a parallel circuit. 

______Microfusion packs? _Dr. Sera almost asked Scotch if he and his brother were crazy, using that kind of power supply in a vehicle. Radiothermic generators were extremely safe, but a ruptured micro- fusion pack could explode, perhaps take out half a city block. Yes, she _almost _lectured him on the dangers of using such a power supply in a vehicle, but then she remembered the dangerous creations she made in her own dark moments: handguns, energy rifles, the Adversary…

_____"_We're almost there, Dr. Sera!_" Scotch yelled above the loud thrumming of the engine. She nodded, looking down at the dark little compact weapon she held in her lap. He glanced once more at the pretty female scientist and again saw the sad, downcast look in her eyes. If she was feeling down, then he couldn't help but feel the same way. "_Is everything okay?_"

_____She suddenly put on a smile before she yelled her answer back. "_Oh, yes! Everything is quite all right! Just take me there, and I'll see to it that the Adversary is no more!" _She waved the dark pistol. "_This is my ultimate weapon, capable of making matter itself disappear!_ _You saw what it did during my demonstration!_" 

_____Grimly nodding, Scotch acknowledged Dr. Sera's answer. He had indeed seen what that dark pistol was able to do. He had to. Some business suit-wearing ex-bounty hunters had come by his place of work, put him in a car, and drove him to the nearest warehouse where Black Market executives were organizing this little plan. Everyone at that meeting saw Dr. Sera fire the dark pistol and make chunks of metal disappear; anything hit with that pistol was covered over with an eerie, glowing sunset-colored haze…before it vanished. To show how easy it was to use it, some Black Market executives (a few of them being ex-bounty hunters) were given chances to fire it at other pieces of junk--with the same strange and ultimate results. After Dr. Sera used the dark pistol against the Adversary, she hoped nobody ever used it again. 

_____That would have to be soon now. A right turn, and they were soon in the very same area of the Adversary. And there it was, tearing open another car with its mighty claw-hand. There were ruined store-fronts all along this city street, and one small building had been completely obliterated. Then they heard the deep roar of that thing echoing among the buildings…

_____He put on the brakes and forced the dune-buggy into a "fishtail" maneuver--the kind of tire-squealing stop that left the vehicle turned halfway around. When this dune buggy came stopping half the street's length, several buildings away, the Adversary's massive upper body rotated around on its armored waist. The optical sensors were pointed in this direction, and it seemed to hesitate. Scotch and Dr. Sera now knew that they were spotted.

______"Gol darn it…!_" grunted Scotch, turning his head right and looking past Dr. Sera in the passenger's seat. The Adversary seemed bigger this time, much more horrible. He was about forty meters from the thing over there, and he could see every grotesque, sharp detail of the big thing--worse than he remembered it. The armored chest seemed made of square blocks, assembled vaguely into the shape of a muscular man's torso--streaked with nightmarish red and white paint-stripes. Its arms were thick as telephone poles, while the legs were jointed electromechanical pillars--the feet being silvery hooves. He saw every chunk of metal that was its armored chest--sections of it still open. The thing was painted all the wrong colors, and its torso was a chunky chaos. It was a monster, plain and simple. How could such an intelligent, wonderful and beautiful woman like Dr. Sera make something so horrible? 

_____Now it was time for her to destroy it. Dr. Sera unbuckled the adjusted seatbelts and got out of the dune buggy's seat. The compact dark pistol seemed to be lighter now, though the insides of the heavy little weapon was made of something more dense than ordinary metal. Standing with her legs slightly apart to give herself balance, she was aiming with the dark pistol.

______"TARGET"_ boomed the amplified voice of the metal beast. It then began to turn itself fully in towards Dr. Sera and Scotch, pivoting on silvery hooves. That done, there was suddenly a street-shaking _how-w-wl_ of raw anger. It sounded so that Scotch couldn't be sure if it was the roar of an animal or of a machine. The massive arm-cannon was then….aimed…in…this…direction… 

_____A lot can blur through a person's mind when faced with the prospect of a sudden, violent and fiery death. Scotch was thinking about how stupid he had been all of his life. Their father was such a great guy, knowing so much about vehicles and machines--dying sick in bed. His brother would criticize him for being so goofy so often, often not taking anything seriously. Only after his brother died did Scotch take life for real. It was too late to make up for everything now, though. He'd tried his best…

______Target indeed_, thought Dr. Sera, staring through the sights of her compact dark weapon. For a moment, she was distracted by the Adversary's charge-up: swirling, ghostly plasma energy beginning to build up within the arm-cannon. _Something _was wrong here, something that didn't _feel_ right… "_Shoot it, Dr. Sera! Shoot it before it blows us away!_" Blinking once, she fine-adjusted her aim and squeezed the trigger.

__

_____Crack! A bright glowing streak of neon red snapped out from the pistol and struck the Adversary. The results were just as eerie and as sickening as before, giving Dr. Sera a sickening feeling just watching it. That familiar sunset-colored glow, that eerie haze, began to cover over the Adversary. In several seconds, the Adversary was completely lost from sight.

_____There was a beastly growl coming from within the haze, a terrible monstrous sound of anger--and triumph. _What was this! _Dr. Sera saw the top and bottom of the Adversary become free of the sunset-colored haze. Then its left claw-arm was free. The sunset-colored haze was dissipating, apparently not having an effect…

______What was this! _The Adversary's arm-cannon was still aimed in this direction. But instead of firing, the metal beast's arm-cannon was actually sucking in that sunset-colored haze. _It was charging its arm-cannon with her shot from the dark pistol._

_____"No, Oh no," moaned Dr. Sera. She dropped her aim, lowering the dark pistol. Then she went to her knees, feeling weakened. "Oh, no-no-no…" Everything was all wrong now. The dark pistol was supposed to be strong enough to send objects out of this reality, capable of destroying entire city blocks. But if even this could not stop the Adversary…

_____Using the strength and agility of synthetic muscles, Scotch grabbed Dr. Sera around the waist and put her in the passenger's seat before he himself hopped into the driver's seat, twisted the steering wheel to the left and put his foot to the accelerator. "We've got to get the _heck _outta here, doc!"

_____Somehow, the two got out of there just before the Adversary let loose with that newly charged shot_. _They were speeding away from that street and going around a corner when a thick and fierce-glowing pillar of energy _blasted_ out towards where they once were. The blast struck a building, and the entire structure collapsed halfway before it dissolved in that sunset-colored haze. _Vanished…_

…

_____Later, they were in a ground-floor café of a Black Market office-building. This building was once a center for Zalem's control over the city--where bounty hunters could give the heads of criminals to cylinder-bodied Deckmen for cash. Now it was a place from which the Black Market gladly kept control. But with that monster still out there somewhere, their control was coming under question.

_____Scotch and Dr. Sera were in this building, on the ground floor. They stared at the dark pistol on the table, the dark metal glinting in the light coming in from the window. She said to Scotch, "After I made this, this was the weapon I feared all of my life. I never wanted to make it again…" A tear came down her right cheek. "And I _never _wanted to use it again. I never wanted _anyone _to use it ever again. I was just…_so afraid_ of its power. A small group of people armed with weapons like this could destroy cities--leaving nothing but craters in the ground. I almost wanted to die so this thing wouldn't be made ever again. But, well… You know of what I had done to myself before to prevent it from coming back." 

_____"Now that you're one person again, the dark pistol came back," said Scotch. "But still, it wasn't enough to stop the Adversary. So this thing isn't as scary as you thought it was. I wish I didn't yell at you, making you shoot an' all…when you knew you shouldn't have."

_____"No, it is not a fault of yours," said Dr. Sera, wiping stray tears from her cheeks with her fingertips. "You had no way of understanding the capacitating properties of the Adversary's weapon. It is not so much an energy cannon as it is a high-potential, high-yield cylindrical capacitor. That is why it requires that amount of time between firings. When I shot at it with the dark pistol, the Adversary just sucked the energy right in and used it against us. Ha-ha… Funny irony! My own creation using my own offense against me. My best attempt, and a _failure._" Then tears began to flow from the rims of her ceramic eyes--easily sliding down the smooth synthetic skin of her cheeks. Though her body was synthetic, her tears were real. They were the real tears of failure…and frustration.

_____A gasp escaped her lips when a solid hand _gripped_ her left shoulder--the metal hand belonging to a professionally dressed female cyborg with fluffy brown hair. "Hi there! My name's Lyn, and I'm going to be your escort today! You'll come along, not making any trouble, right? Goody…! Let's go!" The grip almost lifted the female scientist out of her chair. 

_____"H-hey!" blurted Scotch, raising a hand in protest as Dr. Sera was being taken away from this table. Some people at other tables went quiet and looked in this direction. Surprisingly, the female enforcer turned her head to look back. Scotch 

_____The enforcer's head actually turned all the way around on her metal neck--facing backwards. Then she smiled, her metal teeth being sharpened razors. Any sort of courage Scotch might have had was wiped away just then; the sight of that smile was enough to stop him. He could just watch as Dr. Sera was being "led" out of this restaurant.

…

3.

…

_____Dr. Sera looked out the rear right-side window, looking past the male cyborg that was gripping her right wrist. On her left, another male cyborg was holding her other wrist. They were making sure that she didn't try to get out of this dark car. This vehicle stopped in front of her own research facility--the six-story building she purchased from the sale of the new synthetic-flesh type bodies. 

_____Shutting off the heavy electric engine, the female enforcer up front spoke up. "Here's how the cards are laid out," she said. _Cards? _That particular expression caught Dr. Sera's attention. "There are some very important people who don't want you hurt. It turns out that you made so many important people happy with your work that they don't want you to _ever _stop working! With the Adversary stomping around, my bosses don't want you in _any _danger--not even the kind of danger you put yourself in."

_____The male cyborg holding her right wrist added something else. "Yeah… That's right, _doctor._ If the Adversary gets you, you can't work anymore, can you? You won't be able to make synthetic-flesh type bodies for important people…" He pulled the wrist closer to his eyes--looking at the smooth "skin." "Your skin looks almost real."

_____Dr. Sera smiled bitterly. "Certainly! However, I would find it rather difficult to continue my research in synthetic flesh with the likes of you and your colleagues inspecting my body." The cyborgs released her wrists, and she rubbed. "Given our current agreement, I am not to leave the building, correct? And I understand that you have all of the exits sealed off, welded the windows shut, and have even closed off the basement access to the sewers?" The cyborg smiled. "Then, there would be no need for you to step into my building during the course of my work."

_____Speaking in a too-cheerful tone, the male cyborg on her left answered. "Certainly not! Okey-dokie… You can go play now, doctor. Just don't try to leave the building. We don't get to _kill _you, but we can hurt that nice-looking synthetic body of yours so that you won't try to do something stupid…like trying to get out."

_____That said, the two male cyborgs got out of this car and led Dr. Sera to the front entrance of her own building. They also nodded to the other expensively dressed cyborgs standing at the front. Dr. Sera knew that they were not only there to try to "protect" her from the Adversary, they were also there to keep her from keep her in. 

…

_____In the white-tiled reception area, the petite, blonde secretary quickly stepped out from behind the desk and quickly stepped over to the female scientist--her long flaxen hair fluttering. She gently put her left arm around the scientist's waist. Like the scientist herself, the secretary had a synthetic-flesh body: shown off with the open collar of her blouse and the shortness of her skirt. "Dr. Sera! Oh my gosh…! What happened! Did they try to hurt you? Those bullies…!" 

_____"No, Maureen… They didn't harm me. However, they promised to do so if I ever left this building," she said. Maureen gave a squeaking gasp, her fingers quickly to her lips--blue eyes wide with surprise. "They said, it was for my own protection."

_____"Oh my gosh… They didn't say they were gonna make you _disappear_ or anything bad like that, right?" asked Maureen the secretary. "Oh… They would've just taken you away, then--making sure you don't come back. I hope they don't lie and take you away, anyway…" By now, the security guard--an ex bounty-hunter in dark clothes--had take interest and was looking over here. 

_____"All the same," said Dr. Sera. "I may have to disappear again, after all. If you will excuse me, I have work to do." She walked over to the elevator with the secretary staring. Just before the elevator doors closed, she said, "And goodbye, Maureen."

…

_____Several hours later, Lyn and several other enforcers were in a nearby factory--the clanking of the heavy machinery somewhat audible through the floor. Earlier, this group had "convinced" the senior manager to let them use his security room. All Lyn had to do was smile at the short man, and he was glad to oblige. 

_____They weren't really _interfering _with Dr. Sera's work… Sure, this razor-toothed female enforcer had promised not to "interfere" with Dr. Sera's work by putting guards in there. Instead, it was easy to put up a few security cameras in her building and keep an eye on her. So long as the good doctor didn't notice a few extra cameras in certain places, things would be fine: no hurt feelings.

_____Hmm… Where _was _Dr. Sera? Lyn frowned. The doctor hadn't shown up on any of the video monitor-screens for the past few hours. They had seen the scientist doing a great deal of boring things like setting equipment, writing out technical notes and talking to other people in white lab-coats. She seemed to be doing typical scientist-stuff right until she went into one particular room on the sixth floor…

_____"She could _not _have gotten out of that building," said Lyn, thinking aloud. The other enforcers, sitting at the video monitors, looked back at her. "Not jumped, not climbed, not _anything_. I mean, we covered all the exits, right?" They nodded. "She didn't jump out a window, because we've even sealed those up… _Hey! _Don't look at me! Keep your eyes on the monitors!"

_____Surprised, the other cyborgs turned to look at the monitors. Their attention was solely on looking out for a certain red-haired female scientist. But if they had been paying attention to other people in the building, seen on the monitors, they would have noticed something else. They would have noticed the new presence of two more cyborgs.

_____Two more scientists? The enforcers didn't notice, didn't care. Ranging from gnarly faced freaks to nice-looking cuties, all of those science-and-technology people in the building started to look the same after a while. They all wore lab-coats and worked with computer-machines and technical papers and all that kind of fancy stuff. Even if those two female scientists on that monitor were rather cute, they were yet more of the same: lab geeks. They even looked the same, may as well have been twins. 

…

4.

…

_____Life was finally settling into a routine for Scotch. He worked in the West-Side Arena garage during the day, did some relaxing reading during the afternoons, then went to a performance by Aikasa at sunset. Then he would drive back to his apartment--fully capable of driving due to his artificial organs filtering toxins. If he was a fleshie, this would have been impossible; it took a square head to drive his custom-made vehicle. There, back home, he would catch up on newsprint reading and eat some glucose-rich foodstuff before going to bed, maybe with the radio on. A night's sleep and he would be up again to do the same thing over again… Nice and predictable.

_____Dr. Sera was gone, probably never coming back again. He saw them take her away. All that he had heard about her from there was just rumors. Not lies, because nobody really knew the truth. Maybe she was chained to a factory machine or some kind of robot, forced to do technical work for the rest of her life--however long that would be. The people at her former place of work outright refused to tell him she had gone. 

_____When he became too persistent in his questioning, they angrily told him, _Go away! _So that was done. Dr. Sera was done and gone… He didn't want to even think about that anymore, not think about his friends, his father, his brother, or that beautiful woman. All of them were dead some way or another. He was alone now, alone in a city full of people.

_____Right now, he was in that part of his daily routine following Aikasa's performance. She had done her thing at this pub and was being driven to another place to sing tonight. And of course, about half the crowd here was already piled in friends' cars or on trucks and going to wherever the beautiful little enchantress was going next. Some people, like him, were just content to have heard her sing once--the lingering memory of her delicious singing voice and wonderful melody lingering like a remembered dream.

_____The waitress--a female cyborg in in dark pleated skirt and white blouse--walked up to this table and saw the half-empty mug of beer. Scotch shrugged and raised the mug once. Nodding, the waitress went away to get some more. As he saw her walk away, he wondered why he bothered to drink beer at all since his artificial insides filtered out and flash-vaporized most everything. All he did was taste the thick smoky-flavored liquid as it went down his mouth and gullet. 

_____When the waitress returned with another full mug of beer, he gave her another minor-denomination credit-chip. She smiled and accepted the chip--went away again on hard-heeled dark shoes. He was going to finish off this mug and the fresh one when something surprised him. Someone kissed him on the right cheek with soft, cool lips. When he turned his head to see who planted that one on him, someone else kissed him on the other cheek with lips that felt the same way.

______What the…? _His "attackers" then came around from behind, sat at the two other seats of this table--sitting side by side. "_Hi, Scotch!_" said the twin females in unison--young and athletic-looking cyborgs, dressed in tee shirts and form-fitting jeans--small purses slung over their shoulders. Even if they were metal-bodied, they looked beautiful. "_How've you been?_" They both smiled at him, matching smiles on their pretty faces--faces framed with long, silken dark hair.

_____"Harrah… Kyrie… You're back?_" _he asked. They nodded and smiled. "I thought you two were both separate halves of Dr. Sera's brain. So if you two are here, then she's…" Their smile faded, and they nodded again. They confirmed the news.

_____"But don't think of it that way, okay? It's… Its…not accurate, you know?" said the cyborg-girl sitting on the left. "It's not like the person you knew as Dr. Sera, like, put a _gun _to her own head and blew her own brains out. I'm still Dr. Sera."

_____"Me too. I'm also Dr. Sera," continued the other cyborg-girl. "I remember most of what's been happening, too. We-e-ell… Most of the important stuff, anyway. I don't have all the memories. Some stuff is a little foggy, and some stuff just isn't there at all." She looked at her sister. "Maybe Harrah remembers it, and maybe not." 

_____"I sometimes remember the color of the tee-shirt somebody wore the other day, and my sister won't," explained the other twin. But no matter how hard we try, some memories are just…_gone_. Like, we both don't remember how to make guns. Funny thing is, we don't remember the details of how to make a synthetic flesh-type body, either." 

_____The cyborg-girl on the left rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Yeah! The scientists back at the research facility really tried to get us to remember more. But…we don't! It's not like they don't already have the schematics and notes for making myogel muscle and stuff! They were just so _nasty _towards us! _Eww! _It's like they were trying to teach us to be laboratory people or something, trying to make me remember everything…" 

_____"Then one guy said I was _a_ _stupid!_ " complained the cyborg-girl on the right. "Could you believe it? He didn't just say the word _stupid. _He said I was 'a stupid,' like some kind of mutant creature born without a brain! I can't believe that I was actually _friends_ with those people! They may know all that freaky stuff about converting brains for use in cyborg bodies, but my sister and I both know more about electromechanics and machines than those guys do. So…"

_____Scotch listened to the enthusiastic chatter of the twins. _This _was what was missing from his day! Being with familiar friends, listening to them talk, _that _was better. There was something that felt good about being in the company of these two beautiful, cheerful and friendly girls he had known for so long, something pleasant and…proper. It was almost the same feeling he felt when listening to Aikasa sing. Everything was just alright with the world again!

_____While they chattered, the waitress came over to this table. The twins ordered tea and chocolate, talked some more. "But, you wanna know the _real _reason why I split again?" said the twin on the left. "Some Black Market creeps wanted to keep me trapped in the research facility and keep inventing new and snazzy things."

_____The twin on the right laughed, "Ha-ha-ha…! They had the whole building surrounded with guys in those expensive-looking black business clothes. The sewers, the windows, everything was sealed up. But they didn't even think that I'd leave as somebody else!"

_____"Or _two_ other somebodies," commented the twin on the left. "I mean, they were trying to keep me trapped in a hospital-place that _makes _cyborgbodies...probably the most realistic kind of bodies in the whole city. The Black Market's executives are good with money and beating up people who make trouble for them, but they're not too smart when it comes to technology."

_____"Which is why so many mechanics were being kidnapped," added the other twin. The waitress came back with trays of chocolate and tea for them. "Thanks!" she said to the waitress. Both twins reached into their small purses and gave credit-chips. 

_____They sipped their cups of tea at the same time, set them down. "_Mmm…_" they said simultaneously. Then they looked at Scotch, their faces showing embarrassment. The twins tried to be separate people, but odd moments of synchronicity like that still happened: They realized how their moments of simultaneous behavior sometimes "creeped out" other people. 

_____For some moments, Scotch looked at them before speaking… He finally said, "I've gotta to tell you something… Something that's been bothering me for a while. I know you two were both Dr. Sera. But even when she was… When you were both in the same body…" They nodded, understanding his confusion of words. "Anyway, even when the woman I knew as Dr. Sera was around, I've had a few really strange dreams.

_____"They go like this. You're riding in a burning bus. The thing's _really _full of fire_. _The cushions are all burning up, the aisle is covered with flames. But none of the passengers really care. Aikasa's bouncing up and down in a seat, laughing and giggling like she's having the best time in the world while there's some old guy shuffling blue playing cards. A blond-haired man in a business suit was talking to you. The guy driving the bus is wearing red, and has thick dark shoes. 

_____"Then I notice that everybody except you is wearing red. Aikasa's in a red dress, the old man is in red coveralls, and even the bus-driver is wearing a red uniform. That's not all that's weird about the dream. I noticed that it was really dark outside the bus. There were some dim lights around, but they're not _real _lights. They were some kind of lights from outer space or something. That nightmare was really scary… And it just gets scarier every time I have it."

_____Listening to Scotch, they were munching chocolate. But as he made those last few comments, they were paused with pieces of chocolate in their metal fingers. _"Wo-o-o-w… Creepy!_" said the twins, in chorus. 

__

…

5.

…

_____"Umm… Barabbas? Do I, like, _have_ to wear this outfit?" she asked, tugging at the hem of her too-short pleated skirt. It barely covered the double-curve of her butt and hips--leaving the full lengths of her new legs exposed. Too exposed, she thought. Her flat and slightly muscular midriff was also left bare by her truncated, sleeveless white blouse--also baring her lean arms. The outfit left a lot of her smooth, cream-toned skin showing. "I feel kinda…" She looked around the small kitchen and whispered, "_Kinda naked, you know?_"

_____Barabbas just smiled and crossed his bulging, beefy arms--bared by his new tank top. His outfit was complete with jeans and brown boots. He looked her up and down. "Oh, come now, Mai!" he said in that refined deep voice of his. "Do have some _confidence_ about yourself, dear! Modesty was never a factor before with your previous body. A synthetic-flesh type body is but another type of cyborg physique." He put a strong hand on one of her slim shoulders, looked into her large dark eyes. "Why-ever should it matter _now_? Hmm?" With the other hand, he stroked a few wayward strands of her straight green hair away from her forehead. 

_____"Well…" She leaned with her back to the wall--feeling the coldness through the material of the too-shirt skirt. Mai really didn't want to undergo the operation. She wanted to stay in her metal-type body--a strong body. A body of metal really did not feel like a vulnerable human one, felt more like armor. Compared to the machine strength of metal, flesh bodies are weak and vulnerable. Skin can be burned and ruined by sunlight and pollution, muscle can be torn, and bones can be broken. 

_____This new body felt too vulnerable one. Her legs, torso, neck, arms…everything felt as "real" as the one she had been born with--having the flexibility of muscle and the sensitivity of skin. Sure, her _skeleton_ was still metal: made of a silvery alloy having the tensile strength of a metal-type. And they said that the artificial muscle tissue had over ten times the strength of the same in humans. All the same, she felt too vulnerable. 

_____Barabbas lifted his hand off of her left shoulder. "I can see the doubt in your eyes… But please, remember why you do this. Remember why you have been by my side for all of this time, through _all _of the travails through the wasteland thus far. All of the struggles, all of the acts of liberation, all of that is leading up to this time!" He clenched his hands together. "Mai_, the time of triumph is approaching! _Once we take this city from the great evil oppressors and seize the resources for the people, the rest of the land shall fall to us. But to do that, we must secure people's attention and confidence. A beautiful and confident young lady like you would bring vigor and charm to our cause…" 

_____"I'm…c_harming?_" asked Mai. She didn't think about it _that _way. "Like, people are _really_ gonna see me as a kinda leader?" She stopped tugging at the hem of her short pleated skirt. "Wow…!" She put on a tentative smile, then the other few people here did the same. 

_____"Certainly!" responded Barabbas. "Now… Off we go to celebrate the liberation of this city block. Leaders of the local populace is in waiting. We should not be rude in testing their patience yet again…" He put one of his long thick arms around her shoulders and led her out of this restaurant's kitchen. When the door swung open, there was a loud cheer from the main room.

…

_____People in clean, grand clothes of all kinds were sitting at restaurant tables--with two of his men standing at the door and along the wall. The people at the tables were in clothes ranging from expensive silken tuxedo-suits to grand leisure robes. Most of them were men--fleshie men and metal-bodied males. And, of course, the appearance of Mai had the predictable effect: They all took looks at her--with some taking longer looks. 

_____Mai moved over to the wall and leaned against it, standing with her feet close together and her arms crossed while Barabbas stepped towards the sitting area. The applause quieted down. "Thank you, all! Thank you for coming to this little informal get-together. I know that you all are usually busy, running your businesses… But you must admit, your businesses have been noticeably more profitable without the so-called Black Market cutting into your profits!" That made for another burst of applause from the well-dressed people at the tables--which again quieted to let Barabbas speak. "That said, this is not really about me…but about _us_. We're here to talk _business--_an ancient term called 'networking.' And that we shall! I'll be at this table should anyone wish to talk to me in particular, but please… Talk among yourselves about furthering our plans!"

_____After that freshet of applause, he raised his hands above his head, nodded to the crowd and then had himself a seat. The woman who ran this restaurant whispered something in his ear. He nodded and told her something. She went away, organizing her waiters to serve the important local leaders here. Then he gestured to Mai, who moved away from the wall and sat in the seat next to him.

_____Edging close to the tablecloth-covered table, she crossed her legs--feeling skin on skin. At least she didn't have to stand up. She still felt too many eyes on her, men glancing and looking while supposedly talking business. She looked to her left and saw Barabbas give her a smile.

_____Two men came to this table. One of them was a male cyborg wearing a white business suit with a beige tie, dark sunglasses on. The other was a fleshie man dressed in a loose buttoned shirt and pressed slacks--a man who looked ready for leisure. "Mr. Barabbas," said the one in the white suit, "May we sit with you and the young lady?"

_____"Most certainly!" he said cheerfully. The two sat down, looking at Mai before forcing their focus back to Barabbas. "And please… We can do without formal titles. I am not _Mister _Barabbas--merely Barabbas. We are all colleagues and peers."

_____"Yes, then," responded the one in the loose leisure-style clothes. "We are pleased with the work you have done. You have swept in from the wastelands on winds of virtue, to purify our city of the great evildoers. For helping liberate the souls of the people, I thank you."

_____ Mai looked at the man. _Gosh, this guy sounds like such a cornball, _she thought. She saw him give a thick-toothed smile. She didn't want to ruin the moment for Barabbas, so she just smiled back. She hoped he didn't think she was making a pass at him--a date or something…. _Ick!_

_____"Odd how you should mention _souls_," said Barabbas. "It was not an act of liberation so much as it was an act of awakening. The people have been asleep for centuries, forever broken and oppressed under then yoke of labor for the sake of Zalem. Downtrodden and defeated, they could do little but bear down and accept their plight--working factories and farms, slaving away and getting pittances in return. _Feh!_ Now the Black Market moves in where Zalem once ruled, replacing one yoke with yet another. However, the slave drivers are careless and more concerned with wealth than they are about control. And _that_, my colleagues, is where _we _come in. A careless slave driver is an easily upset one. We are freeing the souls of the people by freeing them of the evil ones."

_____Nodding once, the cyborg in the white business suit agreed. "It also allows us to follow our own plans. It is too difficult to get things done with a greedy corporation trying to take our wealth most all the time…" 

_____"And our time is nearly here!" said Barabbas. "Gentlemen, as we speak, my people are actively participating in small gatherings of this very same sort--throughout the downtown regions of the city. As you well know, the Black Market rules the city from various power-centers--the main centers being a series of structures that rise high above the streets. By concentrating their power, they have also made themselves vulnerable to but a few sweeping acts. Between our planned acts and the random anarchy produced by the Adversary, the days and nights shall be ours…"

_____Mai listened to Barabbas' plotting and planning. Yes, she had heard all of his talk before. A lot of it was repetitive. But this time, his words were taking on importance. It was for real this time. Of all the farms they had taken over and the deeds they had done, this was the _big time_. 

…

______The alley was darker than usual_. _Of course, this was not just any alley. This was _the_ alley. The old stranger and the shadowy opponent were again playing a game of cards, sitting at the low table. Then again, they were always playing cards. That light fixture attached to the wall, it was getting dim. Shuffling his deck, the old stranger took worried glances at the meager cards he currently had on his side of the table. Across from him, the shadowy opponent chuckled in the darkness…_


	10. Chapter Ten

__

All The Colors of Yesterday 

Chapter 10 

by Elliot Bowers

…

_____It began like every other morning for this executive of the Black Market. There was a high-up view outside his office window, his office being high above the streets and higher than most buildings. The hot yellow sun lit up the sky several hours ago, making for a bright and hazy view of the cityscape through the big wide picture-window--far as eyes could see. Well, it wasn't too far--due to the hazy smog. The chemicals in the air were thick enough to see… 

_____Chemicals, smog, pollution… Whatever people called it, it was good smoke to this executive, Mr. Mikaile. All of that smoke was the sign of _profits _being made. The machine-buildings out there were churning with activity, goods were being made, and all of those working drudges down on street-level were doing something _useful_ instead of just moping around--looking all useless and pathetic. They were all just useless bums and street-trash to him…unless they were in the factories and _working_. 

_____What was Mr. Mikaile doing? Currently, Mr. Mikaile was reading newsprint. He was much like every other executive: a plain face, a conservative haircut, and a creased business suit. And like most all executives, his job description was "administration." There were secretaries, accountants, and other people to handle pay, money management, resource allocation and everything like that--things he was in charge of. He was in charge, so he didn't have to do any of that kind of work. 

_____He had to sit in his office, attend a meeting once a week or so, and sign contracts every so often. The video-phone terminal and the folders on his desk were things there to add to his appearance of importance--to impress the underlings who came into his office. Appearances of importance were important.

______If it weren't for people like me, _thought Mr. Mikaile, _there'd be no one to run this stupid city…full of stupid plebs who don't know the difference between their heads and their butts._ By people like himself, he meant the Black Market executives. Certainly, in a world without Zalem, _somebody _had to be in charge! And all things considered, it may as well be people like himself. 

_____There was a sound in the distance, maybe. He wasn't sure, but he _thought _he heard a _boom_ of sound outside and below. What in blazes…? That was probably a machine malfunction; those maintenance people were just being lazy or something. Maybe it was the electrical system or something… What'd they call it? That power-thing… Ah well, he didn't know, and he didn't care. 

______B-b-bing! _The telephone attached to the video terminal rang, making him nearly fall out of his leather seat. That thing wasn't supposed to ring! Why would anyone call _him _directly? Miss Anbehs, his secretary, was supposed to deliver his messages to him. Ah, Miss Anbehs…

_____It made his work almost pleasant, seeing her step into his office--that little cutie dressed in her short tight skirt and open-collar blouse. With her stylishly straight-cut auburn hair and big dark-blue eyes, she was such a doll, which was the real reason why he hired her. And since she had that new synthetic flesh-type body, the kind of body that looked real all over, he was seriously considering having Miss Anbehs perform more…ah, _secretarial duties _for him in a more _private _context. 

______B-b-bing! _And the phone rang again, shaking him out of his fantasizing. Slapping the desk, he picked up the handset and looked to the small square video monitor--which flicked on. "Who the heck is this! I'm an important man, so this had better be important!" 

_____He saw nothing but jagged lines on the video terminal, heard nothing but static on the telephone line. The hissing noise soon calmed enough for a voice to be heard. "_I knew the words, but I…sang…them…wrong…_" went the voice, gasping and harsh. Mr. Mikaile sneered in annoyance, and then he saw a hazy and wavy image of someone through static--the image of an old man in coveralls. _"It's going to be an o-o-old…sad…song!_"

______What the…? _"Listen, you crazy old nut!" sneered Mr. Mikaile, pointing an angry finger at the wavy, warped image on the video monitor. "I don't know how you managed to call my office or even get my number, but you just made the last mistake of your life! I'm going to hang up, and then I'm going to call a whole group of enforcers to beat you within and inch from death. And some of my enforcers used to be bounty hunters! Hear me?"

_____The screen went black, and waves of static hissed through the phone. "_Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,_" laughed the new voice on the line. It was six sounds… Six syllables… The voice laughed exactly six times before the line went silent.

_____"Hello…! Hello!" shouted Mr. Mikaile. Angry, he was about to press the silver button to signal his pretty secretary when the doors opened. She walked in--wearing that tight little skirt and open-collar blouse of hers. She looked as delicious as usual… But something was wrong. She tried to say something, opening her mouth to speak when about rough-looking cyborgs in coveralls walked in. 

_____Everything happened pretty quickly after that. Miss Anbehs gave a shriek of fright when they shoved her aside, making her stumble over and fall next to the right-side wall. The intruders then strode over to Mr. Mikaile's desk. "What the…?" blurted the executive as strong metal hands gripped the neat clean lapels of his suit. This metal-bodied cyborg lifted him up and hurled him through the big glass window and made him go falling through the pollution-hazed air... 

…

_____"_Ye-e-eah-h-h!" _came the shout, just another shout lost in the rest of the yelling and chaos. The _boom _of sound that Mr. Mikaile heard earlier was the sound of the rioters blowing up a storefront. It didn't matter to Mr. Mikaile now, because he was dead. His corpse was now laying splay-limbed on the sidewalk, along with the bodies of people he had fallen on. There was all kinds of shouting and chaos around here. Some people over there were bashing storefronts, while people over here were bashing guys in business suits. The screaming and shouting was all mixed up with laughter and yelling. 

__

_____"Wooh! Pa-a-arty!" shouted a chubby man in big wide jeans and big tee shirt--two open bottles of beer in his hands, one bottle in the left and another in the right. He stood on top of the bashed shell of an executive's car, now without wheels, windows or even an engine. The rioters had taken that away too. "_Party down, everybody!_" 

_____Some people laughed while some other people managed to get one of the car doors open. They began tugging out the seats, a briefcase, and everything else in there. All of this activity made this car start rocking back and forth. With the car rocking, that chubby man standing on the roof had a hard time standing up straight. He chuckled as he slipped off the car's roof and onto the hood--laughing with his beer splashed on his clothes.

_____What began as a new and made-up holiday turned into a free-for-all street-party! Around some time last night, everyone was told that they didn't _have _to work for the Black Market today. So they didn't. When some of those jerks in black suits came through the local city neighborhoods and asking why people didn't go to work that morning, they just saw everybody sitting around and talking. The jerks pulled out guns and started threatening people. Everybody rushed them, beat them up, took their guns, and _that_ was when the party began!

_____Since then, things have been the loose and wild ways they are now--people running around, grabbing whatever they want and doing whatever! The chubby man had grabbed some cases of beer from a store and was having himself a good old time since then. Everyone else was just happy from smashing things and stealing stuff. He was just happy with his beer and not having to slave away at his loud, hot and dangerous factory job today.

_____Where was that Barabbas guy, anyway? He sure deserved an awful lot of thanks! Thinking this, the chubby man climbed to the roof of the car. Sitting there, he drank some more of his beer and watched the churning masses of fleshies and cyborgs, men and women, kids and adults all around…people doing everything else. He was going half-deaf from all the noise, but that was fine! What a party! And that was when he noticed the old guy--sitting atop another car across the street. Funny, he only saw that old guy once before… Then the tempo of violence and chaos blared even louder.

…

2.

…

_____Barabbas was actually right there in the crowd, being down and destructive with everyone else. The bulbous end of his metal cudgel _wonked _a square piece of machinery some people brought out into the street, and people around him cheered. He had found this metal cudgel from somewhere--a _good _cudgel. Yes, Barabbas firmly believed that proper participation in social upheaval and anarchy required a nice, reliable cudgel. Was it part of some factory machine? Was it some cyborg's left leg? 

_____He paused his destruction just long enough to look over his cudgel--something in the shape of a short metal leg with the shredded remains of a rubbery foot at the end. Actually, this was part of an old Deckman's platform, one of many items "liberated" from a used parts store. Oh well! It just confirmed what Barabbas knew--how those robotic puppets of Zalem ended up. Spare parts, reusable junk sold in corner shops! As he swung the cudgel again, he suddenly had an idea. Maybe later, he would put the metal bodies of corporate enforcers in the same situation that old Deckmen were now: junk to be reused. Swish-_clank!_

_____There was an outburst of heat, sound and flying chunks of building wall--blasting out towards the street. All this screaming and chaos suddenly increased in pitch. Somehow, that was still possible--things getting louder. People were jostling and scrambling now as the disturbance became more violent. _Hmm? _Barabbas bothered to stop swinging his cudgel and looked over at the source of the trouble. Then he smiled. _Ah yes_, he thought, _now the picture of madness is complete_.

_____It was the Adversary, of course, making a typically grand appearance. It had busted its way trough an entire building to get to this street. Now it was here and swiping everyone and everything with that massive three-tined claw-hand. Pieces of cars and parts of cyborgs went _flying_ everywhere, cars and looted machines were smashed, walls were obliterated and the degree of destruction was radically increasing. Instead of running in fear and dispersing, the appearance of the Adversary made for an upgrade to the furious frenzy. The Adversary's great claw-hand swept fleshies and cyborgs aside like wheat being harvested with a grand scythe of death. It was just more of the same: more chaos and violence.

_____"_Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…!" _Barabbas raised his cudgel to the smoky afternoon sky above, and his bellowing laugh exploded from his broad chest and out of his square-jawed mouth. It flowed over this crazy crowd and echoed among the buildings. This was the very core of chaos and anarchy now: all the heat, all the fury, with practically pointless and vicious violence all around as people destroyed things while some other people were being destroyed beyond any sort of reason beyond violence for violence. This was a crowd of people pushed to frenzy and violence by subtle as well as public and repeated messages about the people of the city were being enslaved to machines for the good of the wealthy, about how the Black Market was enslaving people just to benefit the evil wealthy. Weeks of repeatedly putting out that message was just the building up of combustible materials, and this riot was things finally getting on fire. Things were especially burning now--being smashed to bits and going up in flames! So e didn't care _what _the Adversary did to the people here. Smash, kill, destroy… So long as the Adversary was just contributing to the general madness, so much the better! People here were dying, but that failed to matter. Barabbas didn't care if half the local population was wiped out--so long as the fiery and dark swirling mass of violence and insanity spread!

_____Swish--_CLANK! _Suddenly_, _a grand and mighty tone of metal-on-metal echoed above the crowd, a thunderous peal of sound. It was like the ringing of a six-ton bell. And the sound resonated throughout the innards of everyone here, making them stop. What was that? People turned to see the astounding sight. Barabbas looked in that direction, frowning and wondering who stopped his celebration.

…

_____The Adversary was on its back, its chunky metal chest blasted open from the blow of a mighty hammer. That hammer-blow came from something that matched the Adversary in size and might, a metal beast ten feet tall and just about that wide. But unlike the grotesque shape of the Adversary, this new beast was silvery and wonderful, the torso a clean silvery tone--a golden _L _painted on its thick armored chest. It's mighty arms looked ready for battle--the right battle-arm ending in a fist and the left arm being a hammer. It stood on two jointed pillars of legs. 

_____There was another one just like it standing next to it, a mirror reflection of the first. It was the same size, a grand figure of glowingly clean and shiny metal. The pillar legs and thick arms were jointed the same, and it even had a hammer-hand. But the hammer-hand was on its other arm. A huge golden _R _was on the chest of this one. 

_____The one with the _R _brought up its hammer fist… Swish-_CLANK! _That hammer came back down, smashing right into the already ruined chest of the Adversary. Sparks and flames began to sputter up from the Adversary's blasted-open body. _CLANK! _Another resonating blow, and the flames sputtered down to a foul and oily smoke. The other silvery giant joined in, adding its blows to the destruction of the first--a steady beat.

_____ When the Adversary's chest was reduced to a mass of ruined metal, a pile of chunky junk, the silvery giants stopped their labor. The crowd stood there, now so silent that they could hear the wind and the sound of the two giants' thick joints articulating. They lowered their hammers, then sank to their knees. Something began to happen to the giants. 

______Bzzt-clank!_ The upper backs of both silvery giants took on a split--right where the spine would be. What, were they being destroyed? Were they damaged somehow? Then the halves opened up like doors, swinging outward and diagonally upward. Parts began to move inside…

_____Twin dark-haired girls climbed out of the backs, one on the left and the other on the right. Not girls, exactly… They were cyborgs, just like a lot of other people--their feminine bodies crafted of metal from neck to feet. Climbing up to the shoulders of the metal giants, they sat on the statue-like heads. Sitting there, they reached up and undid the big black rubber bands that had their hair pinned up--long dark hair that framed their pretty faces and flowed down their backs, down to their solid hips. 

_____The twin cyborgs, they were beautiful... "Listen up, people!" shouted the one atop the left giant. "Can you hear me? Good!" Everyone now quiet, she was easily heard. Even the afternoon city winds seemed to have quieted down. "Now I'm going to tell you something about all the trouble that's been happening. You're going to feel betrayed and used, but it's for your own good."

_____"Guess what? Barabbas _used _you!" shouted the one on the right. "Here you all were, thinking he was a good guy and making you blame the Black Market for your problems. Yeah, he had you all going…right up 'till when the _Adversary_ came to town. Then he started talking about how the Black Market couldn't keep you safe!"

_____"But the Black Market was doing its best to keep you safe all this time!" continued the twin on the left. "Any time you had problems with mutants or crazies, the people of the Black Market were there for you. A lot of the enforcer-people used to be bounty hunters. They don't take heads anymore, but they still keep trouble from happening!"

_____The twin on the right nodded in agreement with her sister. "Uh-huh! And what else? If Barabbas was here to help everyone out, why did he let the Adversary…_continue to exist_? If two farm-girls like us could come here, make some robot-suits, then _smash up_ the Adversary, why didn't Barabbas try to do the same?"

_____"Again, he was _using _you guys!" shouted the twin on the left. "He wanted to make trouble so he could take you over just like he did a lot of farms. He wanted to overthrow the Black Market, then put himself in charge! Why _else_ did he have other people talking for him and spreading his message all the time? Ever notice how they always showed up wherever the Adversary was, like they knew where it was going to be…ahead of time?"

_____"They were _deliberately_ making the Adversary go to certain neighborhoods!" explained the twin on the right. "They used the Adversary to make the Black Market look bad. And they used it to get you on their side! Think about it!" 

_____This made for murmurs throughout the crowd. Sitting up there--their voices clear and their voices so confident, so radiant--the people could not help but listen to what they were told. Could it be…? It was true, Barabbas had a lot of people working for him. And his people had guns: lots of strange guns they had never seen before. But every time Barabbas people attacked the Adversary, they always let it live. The Adversary was _always_ left…alive… Why? 

_____Why else! A short, muscular man shouted, "Those twins are right! Barabbas had all of those guns…but he never destroyed the monster!" Other people began shouting as well, agreeing with the sentiment. The tide had turned. Now they wanted that big man more than ever--but not in a good way this time. But where did he go?

…

3.

…

_____Tipping the wine bottle, he filled his glass again and stared at the red liquid through the slit-like space between his scarves--the ones wrapped around his face and head. There was something comfortingly beautiful here, how the late-afternoon sun slanted through the window behind his back and passed through his wineglass--almost glowing. When a person feels down and everything seems destined for doom, little things of beauty become noticeable. They are the little things that people take for granted, always, until it is too late.

_____That late afternoon faded into even later afternoon, everyone now off work for today… The rest of the bar was full of conversational buzz about what happened, the radio blaring a Black Market broadcast about the event. 

_____Barabbas wasn't recognized because he was at a corner table with a scarf wrapped around his jaw and forehead. He didn't particularly want anyone to recognize him, especially given the talk that was floating around here. _Kill him,_ said some people. Who did that jerk think he was, coming into the city and trying to turn everyone into his slaves? And hey, didn't the Black Market put a reward on him? _Chop off his head and sell it!_

_____The bottle of red wine atop this table was half-empty, getting emptier with every glass of it he consumed. He had been sitting here for about five hours now, just stewing in his own emotions. _Bullocks,_ he thought. _Just dash it all! _Up went the glass of wine, into his mouth and down to his stomach. Not that Barabbas could actually _become _drunk, but just the act of drinking--an act of deliberate self-befuddlement--was something he just felt like doing now as he listened to the people talking and the radio blaring. 

_____His plan was great…like a great engine, something carefully built over years. First he had constructed the parts of the casing--the ideology of his great plan. Then came the details, the moving parts when he actually put his plan into action. Every farm in the wasteland he had taken over, it was another aspect to the various systems of his great engine of a plan. Taking the city, that would have been the lowering of the upper half--the completion of his engine!

_____Kill _him_? Maybe he should have killed those young metal-bodied brats when he had the chance. He remembered the fight, remembered how he had almost defeated them. Why, they had almost no fighting skills at all save the most elementary strikes most children are taught to defend themselves. Those girls were _children_ compared to him: children! Barabbas had been bested by two little girls…

_____He clenched his fists and looked at how the fine muscles of his heavy tan forearms tensed. He thought he was strong, just so strong… Barabbas thought he was strong enough to move this land, eventually move the world. One mighty man, standing tall and strong, was going to be the hero. This ruined, wasted world needed a hero to look up to: a man of strength and vision to bring it back to great. _____After all, it was the reason for his existence--the reason why he was made up in that floating city so far away from here. And he thought that since he had the transmitting link removed from his head, the link that kept his thoughts connected to Zalem, he thought he was free to pursue his purpose. Then _those _kids came along. He _really _should have killed them, back on that farm…

_____"Thank you, girls!" he said aloud, picturing the deceptively pretty faces of Harrah and Kyrie. Some people looked over at this table, noticing that there wasn't anyone for him to talk to. He didn't care. "I said, tha-a-ank you, girls! I'll love you…'til the _end of the world!_" Barabbas then raised the glass of red wine to his lips, the sunset-colored light from the window playing through the wine.

______Fwip!_ He noticed a playing card land on the table. Curious, he put down the glass of wine and picked up the card. It looked like a perfectly ordinary card, nothing spectacular about it. Who put it here? And that was the last question that came to his chip-contained mind before there was a sharp, loud sound in the confines of this crowded place. 

_____Everyone went silent and was looking over in this direction. Barabbas was wondering why they were looking at him. _What? What did they want from him, staring at him so? _He opened his mouth to speak, but there was only a hiss of static coming from his mouth. A spray of sparks spurted out from his chest right where his heart would have been. _Would_ have been, that is, if he was human. 

_____It would take more than one gunshot to kill him, if a person could use the word "kill" for a synthetic-bodied replicate. Barabbas was never really "alive" to begin with, but it was still hard to "kill" him. Smoke coming from his nose and open mouth, he just looked down at his broad, shirt-covered chest and saw some more sparks spurting. 

______Crack!_ Another shot hit this replicate, right around where the first round had hit. His mouth began to move and more smoke began to come out. But yet another gunshot came before he could try to form any more words. This the body slumped sideways and fell to the floor, spurts of liquid coolant and sparks spraying out from the damage, while dark smoke began to ripple up to the ceiling. It filled the air with the smell of burnt wires…

_____It was like a real-life painting--somehow given slight animation. Everyone was sitting or standing still in this bar, paused and looking at the dark-haired girl dressed in long-sleeved blouse and jeans, a small purse over her left shoulder, a gun in her right hand. People at tables around here had their heads turned in this direction. Over there, the bartender stood with a bottle in one hand and a towel in the other. The faintly black smoke hung close to the ceiling, and small gray wisps of smoke came up from the muzzle of the pistol.

_____"He didn't care about anybody but himself," said the young woman, her voice sounding loud. She stared at the partially scarf-covered face of the man she once cared about--or the replicate. "You know what? When, like, everything was happening…all of that noise and stuff… He _left me!_ The crowd knocked me down and I got trampled! Then he _laughed _at me… _He walked away!_

_____"But guess what? I've got a synthetic body. My bones aren't real. They're metal, so they didn't break. My skin and stuff is fake too, so I didn't get cut or _bruised. _But if I was a real fleshie, I could've been stomped to death! And he just laughed… And laughed…" Her voice rose to a shrill scream. _"He laughed at me while the crowd went crazy! The jerk!"_

_____She raised the gun again, aimed it at the replicate known as Barabbas. Another squeeze of the trigger, and there was another _crack_ of sound. The replicate's synthetic body twitched, but that was only from the impact of the bullet. 

_____Everyone kept staring at her. As if unsure of what to do next, she shrugged and put the gun in her little purse. She turned, her left foot pivoting on a dark heel, and she stepped right on out of here--the door closing behind her. People looked at the body of the replicate as a person would look at a large and disgusting dead animal put in a living room. 

…

_____"You did a good job, Mai," said the petite metal-type female cyborg, standing in front of the car. Like all enforcers of the Black Market, she was professionally dressed in dark clothes. She watched as Mai unsung the little purse and offered it. She shook her head. "No, _you_ keep it. You deserve it. Besides, you'll probably need it to help keep you safe whenever we can't. We try to keep the city's people safe, but we can't be everywhere! Hmm…" She tilted her head to the side. "You know… My superiors are talking about more plans to bring back the bounty hunter program that existed under Zalem. They are even considering trying to fix the Deckmen that began to malfunction when Zalem had the accident. So, are you interested?"

_____"_Eww-w-w!_ You mean… Like, chopping off criminals' heads and _carrying them in a bag? _Like, no thank you!" she said. All the same, she had accepted the cash reward--delivered to her apartment in a building nearby. It wouldn't be safe or practical for her, carrying a head-sized bag of credit chips around like that. It wasn't just for the money, but she needed it especially since she couldn't rely on that big jerk anymore--the jerk she had just killed. "Or uh… Well, like, can I get back to you with an answer? About the bounty hunter program you want to help get started?" She saw the female enforcer nod a yes. "Well, I suppose killing criminals and taking heads is probably better than working in a factory… " 

_____Mai's voice trailed off into silence when there was suddenly a warm orange glow from somewhere behind her. The enforcer was also looking past her, at whatever there was to see. _Oh no… It's that thing again,_ she thought. She could feel the heat of the flames.

_____Quivering, she turned to see the burning bus ambling along the street--all in flames--moving on its ever-melting tires. She and the enforcer stood perfectly still while the flaming vehicle went by. It came close enough to here that she could see the charred rims of the tires and feel the heat from the flames flickering on its boxy metal frame, her ears taking in the crackling of the fires. 

_____It continued on by, going its way. She could just stand there, afraid and still. And she did not move again until the thing rounded a corner. She hoped it was the last time she had ever seen the burning bus. 

…

4.

…

_____The twins were dressed to party--tight fitting pleather skirts that hugged the shape of hips and upper thighs, with synth-silk chemises that clung close to their chests and abdomens, leaving metal arms bare. Kyrie and Harrah were walking along this sidewalk, the buildings to the left and right being colored deep orange-red tones by the sunset. They were talking and laughing about what they saw some guy do at a party. It was just so ridiculous, the way people act sometimes! He was trying to do something with a cyborg, some kind of new dance, when she nearly broke his ankle. More exactly, he put his ankle right where her foot was going. An awkward fleshie trying to dance with a cyborg is never a good combination. And sometimes, it's just funny! 

_____These two were having such a good time that they failed to notice certain…changes in their surroundings. There were a lot less people suddenly around. And when they stepped around one corner, there was nobody around--no one in sight, at least. There were no trucks or cars driving along the street. Some parked cars were by the sidewalk, parked in front of buildings. The buildings were dark and seemed to be empty. 

_____Still, Kyrie and Harrah kept walking and laughing. They had _such _a good time at the party--having drank some of _this_ and tried dancing to _that_ while talking to people. Life in the city was finally beginning to feel good again. And then the twins saw Aikasa lying on the sidewalk.

_____Everything seemed to stop, the moment narrowing to that sight. She was lying on her back, sprawled out--her pleated synthetic silk skirt and white blouse torn in places. Her pale hair was spread out beneath her, with some lengths and strands across her too-pale face. She was very still, her special red scarf lying nearby…

_____"_Aikasa!_" they shouted simultaneously. There was no response. Moving fast and nearly tearing their semi-flexible skirts, the twins were soon kneeling on both sides of Aikasa's still body. Kyrie gently put two of her most sensitive metal fingertips to the side of Aikasa's throat and tried to feel for a pulse while Harrah knelt closer to the mouth and nose. 

_____The wind blew… There was no heartbeat and no breathing. Sick with sudden misery, the twins slowly crawled back and sat down on the sidewalk--the dead body of their friend laying between them. Aikasa looked so small, so delicate. If they weren't sure of her age before, it seemed now that the pale-haired girl looked more like a child than ever--a lost and broken child. How she was dead or why… Those questions just didn't fit right now. She was just _dead_, and that was it--dead too long to be revived with a new body. 

_____They turned their faces away from the darkly miserable sight. Tears filled their eyes and filled their vision. The sobs came next, choking and hurting. It just hurt too much, all of this… This was stupid and wrong. Was it that their friends were destined to simply die? Ritchie was their friend, dead. They heard that Duct was killed by the Adversary--and they destroyed the Adversary. Barabbas was gone, shot by his ex-girlfriend. Good riddance. But Aikasa's death did not belong in the balance of things! 

_____An almost musical sigh filled the wind, a very familiar voice. The twins both turned their heads so fast that fine strands of machinery in their necks clicked audibly. It was an unbelievable sight, heartening and incredible. Aikasa took in a breath, her big pretty eyes open, and she sat up as if she had merely taken a nap--right there on the sidewalk. 

_____Dumbstruck and shocked, the twins could just watch as the waif-thin, pale-haired girl stood up and turned around to face an alley. The winds of the sunset began to blow, carrying with it the beautiful sound of such a sweet melody… It seemed to be coming from Aikasa--from her throat and the small gill-slits in the sides of her neck. Yes, she was a mutant--too beautiful to be human. 

_____As Aikasa began to step towards the dark space between the buildings, Harrah and Kyrie could not help but to stand up. Swaying slightly, their lips parted and eyes half-lidded, the twins took slow and shuffling steps towards the dark mouth of the alleyway. Beyond there was a darkness not lit by the blood-red sunset-colored tones of the dying day. 

…

_____And they continued…_into the darkness. Aikasa was ahead of them, an angelic and pale figure in the darkness. The texture of the concrete beneath their thin shoes changed every few steps, becoming rougher and slightly more cobbled in places. They stumbled in places but kept following… Following the dreamlike girl ahead, their minds wrapped in the music of her inhumanly beautiful voice._

_____As they went on, something happened. There was a wall of streaked yellow and orange haze ahead, making for a low eerie glow in the darkness. The colors looked somewhere between a combination of sunset and fire. Aikasa stepped through, the heat drafts of the fiery colors lifting some strands of her flaxen hair as she passed through. The twins followed suite, strands of their long silken dark hair fluttering. There was the sound of a door closing behind them, and they were somewhere else… 

…

_____The twins looked around, as if there was anything else to see other than the sight in front of them. Other than the big spotlight-illuminated table, there was nothing visible: sheer black darkness all around--a darkness darker than the depths of the universe. It was almost dizzying to look into, how there was nothing but _nothing. _

_____Ahead of them was that big circular brown table, with a circular light fixture hanging above the polished wooden surface. They could not see the ceiling and had the idea that the ceiling was far up in the darkness--if there was a ceiling. "_What is this place?_" they asked simultaneously. 

_____The people at the table did not answer immediately. Some of them were familiar, but some were strangers to the twins. Of course they recognized Aikasa from behind. She was sitting in the slatted wooden chair as so her silken moon-white hair was like a curtain of beauty flowing against her back. And they recognized the old stranger from the back of his coveralls and his odd shirt. Of course, he was shuffling a deck of cards.

_____Sitting opposite the old stranger, someone was doing the same--someone sitting as so the shadows beyond the light obscured his figure. Only his burned-looking hands were visible in the light and atop the table. Sitting next to the shadowy opponent was a petulant-looking girl that seemed to be something like Aikasa's sister--if Aikasa had a sister from Zalem. Yet the girl's blonde hair was curly. She had the circular Zalemite mark on her forehead, and she was putting on a nasty pout. But the third figure sitting opposite Aikasa and the old stranger… She should not be there at all; it was impossible.

_____The third person opposite Aikasa and the old stranger should not be here or anywhere. Her hair was a scarlet contrast to her skin, and her slim feminine body was draped in a white blouse and probably with white slacks to match. Her open lab-coat was smudged with red and stains in places… Her blood-red lips slowly spread into a smile--the kind of smile an ancient fairy-tale witch would give to children about to be eaten. She had no eyes, seemed to be staring with gaping sockets of darkness.

_____It was Dr. Sera… But Harrah and Kyrie, _they _were both Dr. Sera! The left half of the former scientist's brain was in Harrah's head, while the right half was in Kyrie's. Therefore, Dr. Sera should be gone. _Gone! _But there she was: sitting at the table, wearing a red-smudged lab-coat and smiling. It was a sight unsetting enough to almost make the twins turn and _r-r-run_.

__

_____"Please… Don't try to run away." said Aikasa, as if hearing their thoughts. She patted one of the two wooden seats to her left without twisting around on her seat to face them. "There is nowhere for you to run right now. Sorry to say, but I really mean that… Nowhere for you to run. Look around you. So just come sit down here and join us for this round of the game…which you were playing all along."

_____They heard the old stranger chuckle at the statement. "_Heh-heh-heh_… Oh I knew the words. I knew the words, but I sa-a-ang them wrong." He went back to shuffling his cards as he began to hum a tune of his own. _Fwick-fwick-fwick-fwick-fwick…_

_____Kyrie and Harrah sat down in the seats, looking at the unlikely trio across from them. The shadowy opponent continued to shuffle his own deck of cards. That, while the red-eyed Dr. Sera put a small basket of boiled eggs atop the table. She brought one of the eggs to her mouth and bit into it. Blood oozed out from the egg--a blood-filled egg…

_____"Well, don't expect _me _to introduce myself to you dirty little ground-people," said the little girl with curly hair. "You stupid, mush-for-brains, _dirty_ little ground-dwellers… When I get back to Zalem, I'll make sure that big ugly city of yours pays for your lack of cooperation." She suddenly tilted back her head and screamed, "_You broke my favorite toys!_" The shadowy opponent made a sound like a growl, and the girl went quiet.

_____A girl? No, there was something not quite right about that girl with the blonde curls. Her movements seemed a little too quick and stiff. It was as if her voice belonged to something with batteries. There were other things too… And there was the mark on her forehead.

_____"She's synthetic," explained Aikasa. The synthetic girl crossed her arms and frowned while Aikasa continued. "She's a machine-child of Melchezedek--that dark computer that ruled the cities of the world. You see, to keep in charge even after it was killed, Melchezedek had a backup." Looking at the synthetic girl, Aikasa said in beautiful French, "_L'enfant terrible…"_

_____The old stranger and the shadowy opponent continued using cards against each other. Sometimes, the old stranger would lose cards to the shadowy opponent. And other times, the shadowy opponent growled whenever the old stranger won them. Harrah and Kyrie still tried to understand the rules, how some cards beat others. They still didn't get the rules, but they were getting a general idea of the game.

_____Aikasa gestured to the area of this table between the old stranger and the shadowy opponent. "This game just has one name, but it may as well be another name. And they aren't the only one's playing it. Games are played all the time; you probably just don't notice it right away. You two were in the game all this time and didn't know it."

_____"Heh-heh-heh," chuckled the old stranger when he won three cards in a row against the shadowy opponent. "I'll make you cry…like I do!" he declared, doing a final bit of card-shuffling. He then put two cards atop the table--side by side. It seemed that this round of the card game had begun.

_____In response, the shadowy opponent snarled, putting a card atop the table. It was a Queen of Spades. And that was probably the best card in his deck--probably the last significant card. He tried shuffling his deck some more, looked through his remaining cards, but put nothing down. 

_____Aikasa put up her hands in a celebratory gesture. Her big eyes sparkled with glee. She then declared, "The rules of the game! _Ha-ha-ha…_" Her sweet and gentle laugh was like music, light and beautiful. 

_____There was finally a rapid series of plays with minor numbered cards. Chuckling all the while, the old stranger put down some cards and the shadowy opponent growlingly put down others in response. The two kept this up for some time, with some cards going to the old stranger and some going to the shadowy opponent. It was a conversation in the form of card-plays…

_____When the conversation was over, there was no one else left at the table but three. Smiling a pretty smile, Aikasa delicately handled the deck of cards won by the old stranger. The shadowy opponent sat there growling and grumbling for some time. He finally _slapped_ the table with his burned hands and then walked away--into the surrounding darkness of The Void. 

_____There were games played, games always being played. And in such games, there were two sides. One side played with the cards available, while the other did the same. The rules always changed. The players were always changing as well. Still, games always happened. There would be other games for the shadowy opponent to play. 

…

5.

…

_____"There it goes again," said the male cyborg sitting on the wooden crate--looking at the flaming vehicle weave its way through night-time city traffic. He drank some more of his canned juice. It tasted like cinnamon. "Whenever something big and bad happened around here, _that's _when I see it the most." He turned his head to the left. "I told you guys it was real."

_____There were two other male cyborgs dressed in work-coveralls, the kind worn at a factory. They could just look on, dumb-struck, as the burning bus maneuvered between cars and trucks. There it was--as real as anything else. Though bright yellow flames raged and roared from inside it and all over, the thing just kept driving along as if there was nothing wrong with it. They saw the vehicle go around that corner at the far end of this street.

…

_____Kyrie sat up on the hard and white-tiled floor, taking in deep breaths and exhaling. A slightly uncomfortable coating in the tube of her throat made her cough a little, and there was the aching remains of a severe headache--which was gone now. She looked to her left. Her twin sister was also sitting up and giving her a smile. She was okay, too. 

_____"So we made it," said Harrah. Getting to her feet was a little troublesome; her pleather skirt binding the movement of her metal thighs. She then helped her sister up, and both straightened their outfits--skirt and chemise. The two were still dressed as they were before--dressed up for a party. It wasn't as if they were expecting a free trip to Zalem.

_____This place was clearly a control room of sorts. Not only was the floor white-tiled, but most all of the machinery consoles along the right side of this small room were generally slick and a hard white color as well--with bright fluorescent lighting in the similarly tiled ceiling. Even the chairs in front of the consoles were white and hard--straight-backed metal contrivances that looked hard and slightly painful for nuclear technicians of Zalem to sit in. The one doorway out was a thin black outline. 

_____"Did we win the card game? Or did we lose?" asked Kyrie, her voice echoing in the brightly lit white machine-room. "I mean, if we have to do this, maybe we lost…" She looked at her sister. "I don't want to do this." 

_____"Hey, it's not like we've got a choice, do we?" asked the other twin in response. She saw Kyrie walk over to the door and turn the silvery handle--taking a peek outside. And she quickly closed it again. "Yeah, those great big robots in the hall have got guns… We don't."

_____Closing her eyes and nodding, Kyrie agreed. This was the best they could do. They began to get to work. On the control consoles, most of the toggle switches were just numbered. But their main functions were clearly labeled: _Magnetic Resonance Synchronization, Input-Output Collation, Coolant Systems… _Some of the controls weren't on the console and were actually built into the wall-- attached to pipes. Those were white turn-valves that looked like small metal steering wheels. 

_____First, the twins went to work on the controls on the consoles. _Flick-flick-flick…_ It was easy to screw things up since everything really was so obviously labeled. Just flick _up_ all of these heavy switches. Then flick _down_ all of these other switches--the ones for the safeties. Yes, the twins turned off _all _the safeties. Little yellow and red-colored lights began to blink and flicker on the console. 

_____They then went over to the manual valves at the wall to the right of the control consoles. Metal hands on the small metal turn-valves, they began to turn them closed. _Sque-e-eak… Sque-e-eak… Sque-e-eak… _It took many turns to close them, since the valves were meant for just little fine-adjustments. But the deed was done. A siren began to sound in this room, more sirens blaring outside and in the distance.

…

_____"_No, no, no!_ _Make it stop!_" screamed the synthetic girl. She began to flick switches and began tapping commands into a keyboard. The consoles in this palace were just wired for remote and basic controlling, and the trouble was happening with the analog regulatory machinery of Fusion Generator Number 9. According to the data scrolling on one of her monitors, _all_ the safeties were off: a list of systems that were listed as being off, off, off…

_____The only way _that _could have happened was if _someone _made it in to the control consoles of Fusion Generator Number 9. But the robotic sentries had detected no intruders. _Someone_ had to have been there. Someone! Even if the cameras showed an empty room, there had to have been people there to flick the manual settings and turn the valves. The controls were an _analog_ system, no actual electronics!

_____There was a scream from the synthetic girl's throat when one of the monitors displayed a circular graph too far in the red. Her scream was soon washed out in a glare that washed over everything--eliminating all. Everything was obliterated with a pure, glaring white-heat that vaporized everything in this room and obliterated Zalem. 

…

_____Patrick's main pub was a little less crowded tonight. "So… That's what we dreamed happened to Zalem…_again_," said Kyrie. She drank some more of the citric-flavored juice from the glass. "Gosh, even if there was one replicate left up in that city, she should have been smart enough to switch the city over to some safer way of keeping electricity going and stuff. Hmm…" _Gulp_. "This is good lemonade."

_____"Yeah," agreed Harrah. She was drinking more of the same. "Anyway, that's probably why the Black Market techies and mechanics can't get any of the Deckmen to work at all anymore. They probably needed some kinda connection to the machines in Zalem to work. I don't know… Maybe to help control some of their computer-controlled insides? Something like that. Doesn't matter, 'cause those Deckmen-things always gave me the creeps… Ew."

_____Scotch drank some of his apple cider--synthetic apple-flavor, of course. He stopped drinking alcoholic beverages since it was impossible for him to get drunk…unless he could have someone tweak his artificial organs to allow the alcohol into the blood supply to his brain. The problem was, though the city's technicians and scientists now knew enough to manufacture synthetic flesh-type bodies, he didn't quite trust them with the workings of _his _body. The only time he went in to see doctors was when he had to--checking up on the status of his insides. 

_____Right now, he was glad the girls were back. He thought they were gone, having left for six days. No one had seem them--not even where they were supposed to work. "I'm glad you two are here again. I really am." They smiled. The twins had such pretty smiles… "And I'm glad some crazy stuff is over, too."

_____"Oh yeah… Did we tell you we found out where the burning bus came from?" asked Harrah. "It was from a long time ago. You know, when scientists used to do experiments and stuff with space-engines. Some of those space machines…" Her words trailed off into silence as her eyes took on a far-of look. She was looking at someone sitting over at the drinking bar. 

_____Her sister looked in the same direction. And she had the same reaction. Both felt a sort of shocking, sinking feeling of coldness inside. It was the kind of feeling that sapped a person's strength and made for that weak feeling in the knees: the feeling that means, _Oh no…_

_____Over there at the drinking bar, the thing that looked exactly like Dr. Sera was wearing a clean white lab-coat this time. She was over at the drinking bar, talking to Patrick the big pub-owner and easily laughing at whatever jokes he told--her laugh full and throaty, and she would occasionally give a sassy toss of her head of red hair--getting lengths of her hair away from her eyes. But no matter how many drinks she consumed, nothing seemed to affect her behavior. 

_____She got up from her place at the bar walked over to this table. "Good evening, everyone!" she said, folding her hands primly in front of herself. "I didn't think that I would meet up with you all so soon. Too soon? Perhaps."

_____It took an effort for Harrah to speak--too afraid to ask. The presence of Dr. Sera here--or anywhere--was impossible. There were too many question running around in her mind. But one question made it out. "How are you…here?"

_____"Oh, don't be silly, girl," said Dr. Sera. "I got here the same way Aikasa did. And as you probably already know, we do not go where we are not invited. Anyway, the invitations are a great deal easier to fulfill since the way between _here _and the _other _place is easier to navigate."

_____"What do you mean by that?" asked Scotch, his own voice croaking with fear. He didn't exactly know what was going on here. But he definitely had the idea that _something_ was happening. It was like the feeling he had when he saw the burning bus last week. 

_____"_What_ do I mean?" asked Dr. Sera rhetorically. "Or, _how_ do I mean? Scotch, you're a reasonably intelligent fellow, and I take it that the girls have done explaining enough. I'm quite sure you can puzzle out an explanation of your own--perhaps with the assistance of your dual friends here,_ hmm?_" She then stepped around the table and stood behind the twins--putting her hands atop their dark-haired heads, where their half-brains resided in their heads. "They may each only have half the brain power I possess, but they could very well be a match for me. Or have I said too much, too soon? Why, I have! Well, I must be going… I'll be seeing you, just as you'll be seeing me!" She then bent over and turned her head to the side, kissing Harrah on the right cheek and Kyrie on the left cheek. After patting them three times on the head, she turned to leave the pub--went out the door.

_____"Oh no…" said Harrah, looking at her sister. "She's, like, going to be _so much trouble!_ If she's not on our side, then she's got to be working for _that _guy--making trouble. Remember that? The card game? I thought she was just there to scare us or something." 

_____"What are you talking about?" asked Scotch. "You mean there really _is _another Dr. Sera? I thought _you two_ used to be her? If her brain was split to make _your _minds, then who was _that?_" He leaned forward and squinted at them--as if he wasn't sure who he was looking at now. "Or maybe I should ask… Who are _you_? For all I know, you two could be the fakes. You know, with those Zalem brain-chips…"

_____The twins looked at each other, their hands still wrapped around their glasses of lemonade. That could be the truth. What if there really weren't brains inside of their heads? They stared into each other's dark eyes as if trying to see inside, trying to see if they had souls inside. 

…

_____The sun was setting, making for sunset colors everywhere. People walked by on the sidewalks: cyborgs, fleshies, men and women… They walked by as the red-haired woman in the white lab-coat disappeared into the dark alley--swallowed up by the deep darkness. Some passers-by gave worried glances at the alley when some warm steam came pouring out from there, that lightless place between the rectangular buildings. Steam? Or was it smoke? It smelled like something burning. There was a flash of light, and a laugh echoed out while a playing card fluttered down to the sidewalk: a Queen of Spades. That laugh…did not belong to anyone from this world. 


End file.
